Happy 40th birthday! Here's a hybrid minivan
577 horsepower. 590 pound-feet of torque. A cloth top, 80-degree weather and not a cloud in the sky. On my last day on Earth as a 39-year-old, I went to sleep with a 2024 Mercedes-AMG SL 63 in my driveway. The next day, I awoke firmly on the elder side of the millennial spectrum. Outside, the sleek 2+2 with a payment the size of my mortgage had undergone a metamorphosis of its own. Still red, but now sporting four more seats and a decidedly less impressive powertrain — the prudent choice for a responsible, cost-conscious family man turning the midlife corner. Put another way, I awoke to reality.
OK, so that 2024 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid didn’t appear in my driveway overnight, nor is the Mercedes mysteriously unaccounted for. This was all planned in advance, and in defense of both Zac Palmer (who has the unenviable task of assigning these sorts of things) and Greg Migliore, with whom I made the exchange, neither knew that they were taking the SL from me on the eve of a major personal milestone. When Greg found out, he tried to refuse the trade on the grounds that I’d have more fun in the Benz. Good guy, Greg.
But no, this was just too perfect. There aren’t many cars that embody the midlife crisis convertible more comprehensively than a little red convertible. I mean, look at Santa Claus. Poor guy only gets out once a year, and this is how he chooses to do it. Who the hell am I to second-guess a guy who knows a thing or two about making an entrance?
And certainly, it’s a car to be seen in. The 4.0-liter V8 barks just loudly enough that passersby can’t help but tilt their heads, but not so loud as to interrupt a curbside dinner conversation. AMG’s treatments have always come off as a bit heavy-handed in exchange for lacking the sharper edges of BMW’s equivalents, but the SL63 leans toward elegance. Think Chris-Craft, not Cigarette boat.
On a leisurely, even cruise through the upscale Detroit suburbs of Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills, the SL blends in. While the neighborhoods tucked off the main roads here may be home to many domestic auto industry executives, they’re hardly home-built strongholds. You’ll see a Lamborghini Urus about as often as not if you commute through this part of the Woodward Avenue corridor; the SL is about as remarkable around here as a Prius.
But to the male in the throes of middle-aged upheaval, it’s an absolute gem, especially in Patagonia Red. Between the V8, the universally accessible nine-speed automatic and the “look honey, it has some!” back seats, it’s a superfluous financial catastrophe just clamoring to be rationalized. And perhaps more insidiously, the SL 63 makes one hell of a first impression. From the start-up shout of the V8 to the whoosh of the soft top mechanism, it all feels crisp and rehearsed — like it was engineered just for you.
Its mild road manners also make it approachable despite its deep underlying capability. A 911 Cabriolet this is not, but dialing up the aggression in the Sport drive modes unlocks a ton of well-disguised potential. Even tipping the scales at nearly 4,300 pounds, this little droptop can boogie. It’ll do 0-60 in 3.5 seconds and hit 196 mph — crazy fast for a cabriolet — but feels completely at home just loping along in lazy evening traffic. It’s the consummate cruiser.
Unlike the Mercedes, the Pacifica is anonymous everywhere, especially in Metro Detroit. And let’s be honest, next to the SL 63, the Pacifica packs the charisma of threadbare cargo shorts. You can stick seven people in the Pacifica and still have plenty of room for the legs you removed from anybody who was dumb enough to try to access the rear bench in the Mercedes. And since it’s a plug-in hybrid, it gets somewhere between 30 and infinite miles per gallon doing it. It’s almost offensively practical.
The thing is, the Pacifica’s PHEV setup makes it sneaky quick. It may be quite a bit heavier than the V6 Pacifica, but the instant torque makes it a hell of a sleeper. One of these will keep the 5.3-liter Tahoe guys honest at the stoplight. It’s abundantly weird to feel impressed by the off-the-line punch of a front-wheel-drive minivan after spending the better part of a week driving a car with twice the power (not to mention twice the driven wheels). I’m not sure what to say. Welcome to the era of electrification?
Out of sheer curiosity, I took both down the same stretch of heavily pockmarked surface street just inside the Detroit city limits. It’s the same punishing stretch I use to evaluate ride quality in our long-term loaners. The Pacifica had a tough act to follow; our long-term 2023 Toyota Sienna comported itself beautifully along the same corridor. I worried that the much heavier PHEV would suffer; it didn’t. But the SL’s performance here was the real surprise. While it didn’t offer anything resembling the Pacifica’s ride quality over this broken asphalt, it stayed remarkably composed. Still, score one for the cargo pants.
But this was never meant to be a comparison. At nearly $150,000, the price spread between these two cars is more than some people will spend on transportation in their lifetimes. And if I’m being honest, it takes something like this to make the Pacifica Hybrid seem cheap. MSRPs for Chrysler’s plug-in start where its ICE and standard hybrid competitors top out — about $50,000. But sure, in the presence of a $205,000 Mercedes-Benz, the Pacifica might as well be a Maisto diecast on the clearance shelf at Target.
Effectively, I spent a week near the extremes of a broad middle-aged lifestyle spectrum — an assertion that will likely draw ire on behalf of the extremely frugal and truly privileged alike. At the end of the day, I can better relate to the guy showing off power sliding doors than a power retracting convertible top. Call me practical or even just plain poor, but as tantalizing as the SL may be, two hundred grand goes a really long way. That’d buy me a new garage, a Gen 2 Dodge Viper and a nice truck. I’m settling for the garage, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy SL-sized dreams on my Pacifica-sized means.
It’s rare that life sets up a joke so elegantly as this one, and I was glad to make myself the punch line. The story itself is a gift more valuable than an extra night behind the wheel of an undeniably cool car. But while the SL may be somebody’s midlife fantasy, it isn’t mine.
I wasn’t kidding about that garage.
