With as much as 503 horsepower on tap, the
Mercedes-AMG C63 is one seriously powerful vehicle. But it's not the most
extreme that Affalterbach has done.At this point you may be screaming “Black
Series!” But that's not even the extent of it. Before the Black editions of the
C63 and CLK63 came the beast you see here. And it can be yours for the right
price.
What you're looking at is a 2007 Mercedes-Benz CLK
DTM AMG – a special edition made to celebrate Benz's performance in the popular
German touring car series. But far from a packet of stickers and some special
wheels, the DTM edition bridged the gap between the road-going CLK and the one
campaigned on track.
For starters, it packed a 5.4-liter supercharged V8
tuned to produce 582 horsepower and 590 lb-ft of torque – more than today's C63
S or those dearly departed Black Series models. Channeled to the rear wheels
through a five-speed automatic transmission, it could rocket to 60 in under
four seconds and top out at around 200 miles per hour – supercar figures, in
short, especially over ten years ago. That also leaves it as the most extreme
baby Benz this size of the Le Mans-spec CLK GTR, a mid-engined twelve-cylinder
homologation special that shared little with the road-going model aside from
their name.
Though there was clearly a CLK under there, the DTM
edition was upgraded visually (and aerodynamically) with wider wheel arches,
big air vents, and an aero kit pronounced by that giant rear wing. Mercedes
only made 100 coupes, and they sold out so quickly that it set about making
another 80 convertibles like the one you see here. At nearly a quarter-million
euros, they were crazy expensive for a C-Class, but in a testament to their
prowess, F1 drivers like Mika Hakkinen, Kimi Raikkonen, Juan Pablo Montoya, and
Jenson Button (who were used to winning grands prix under Mercedes power on
track) snapped them up lickety-split.
A decade later, this example (snapped by Dirk de
Jager) has less than 12,000 miles on it, and is set to feature at RM Sotheby's
London auction next month. A fitting memento, we'd say, now that Mercedes is
leaving DTM for the "greener" pastures of Formula E.
