Mercedes SLR McLaren production ends entirely next year

It's been a long, drawn-out goodbye for the lackluster Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. The last of the original coupes rolled smoothly off the production line at the end of last year, and the subsequent SLR Roadster is set to follow in 2009.

The SLR drew criticism from the start as a wishy-washy compromise of a supercar with an automatic transmission, better suited towards boulevard cruising – of which it was capable in the grandest style – than white-knuckle driving. The future is looking brighter, however, as a whole array of mouth-watering supercars is popping up in the SLR's place. We brought you news yesterday that the SLR's supercharged V8 engine could find its way into the next Pagani. Before that we brought you spy shots of the upcoming SL65 AMG Black Series, whose performance promises to eclipse the SLR's at a fraction of the price. Mercedes is also preparing an even more extreme SLC with potentially even more blistering performance. McLaren, meanwhile, unhappy with the compromises forced upon it by Mercedes over the SLR project, is going its own way with the P11 project. With this cache of supercars coming down the road, we think it'll be rather hard to miss the SLR at all. Don't you?