Mercedes SLS AMG news - SLS: back in Black? - 2009

Now you've had a good long look at the Merc SLS - and if you haven't, may we humbly recommend the new issue of Top Gear magazine, which features an exclusive shoot with the gullwinged supercar - surely your thoughts are now turning to the Really Hot Version. The Black Series.

Having already created harder, faster, nastier versions of the SLK, CLK and the SL, the evil Dr Frankenblack will soon turn his scalpel to the SLS. The gullwinged Black Series is expected to arrive some time in 2011, and here's what it might look like in ready-to-race form.

This isn't, we should stress, an official Mercedes image, but instead a rendering from most excellent photographer-designer-chap and Friend of Top Gear, Sytse Dijkstra.

Taking the SLS's block-nosed silhouette and adding a fat bodykit, side-exit exhausts and proper racing bits including a roll cage, massive rear wing and, er, lots of stickers, we reckon it looks mighty fine. What do you think?

And, just as importantly, what will it be powered by? The stock SLS, remember, sees Merc's 6.2-litre V8 putting out 571bhp, while the CLK Black Series gets the same engine in 530bhp form, which plainly won't do.

The SL Black Series gets a far more appropriate 6.0-litre twin-turbo V12 putting out around 670bhp, which still sounds just a little bit modest for the ultimate AMG.

What would you like to see under that long, long Black Series bonnet?

Now watch Clarkson thrash the awesome CLK63 AMG Black: