2005 Mercedes-Benz SLK55 AMG

V8 engine burbling under the hood, check. Retractable hardtop roof to amaze the neighbors, check. Big three-pointed star planted smack dab on the nose, check. Fact is, short of active suspension and pop-up rollbars, Mercedes's new SLK55 AMG does just about everything the slightly larger, considerably heavier SL500 and SL55 AMG do--for $30,000 to $60,000 less.

Normally the SLK Class with its standard V-6 engine competes against the likes of the Porsche Boxster, BMW Z4, and Audi TT, one class down. But shoehorn a V-8 in there as AMG just has and Mercedes's smallest roadster starts hunting bigger game. The SLK55 can show the SL500 a thing or two on an interesting piece of road. It's a second and a half quicker to 60 than the SL500 and just 0.2 seconds slower than the supercharged SL55.

As AMG president Hubertus Troska puts it, "The AMG version of the SLK is a man's car." Which has got to put it right up there with football, pizza, monkeys, and young women jumping on trampolines.

As flexible and responsive as the SLK350's double-overhead-cam V-6 is (especially when teamed with the new slick-shifting manual gearbox), the AMG-built V-8 in the SLK55 is way more tasty. A healthy 32-percent power boost, from the V-6's 268 horsepower to the V-8's 355, and an even more sizeable 46-percent-extra dollop of torque, from the V-6's 258 pound-feet to the V-8's 376, transform the car.

Naturally, AMG follows through with the same level of upgrades on the rest of the car. A true dual-exhaust system broadcasts a throaty tone from four oval tips. As with other AMG models, no stick-shift tranny is available, but the AMG Speedshift version of the 7G-tronic transmission offers three shift programs and gives the driver the option of sequencing through the gears via gearshift paddles on the back side of the steering wheel.