Unique ? In reality not quite. To participate in the 24 Hours of Le Mans 1998, its main sporting objective that year, and then continue in the FIA GT championship that it had won the previous year, Mercedes AMG is developing CLK-LM. The car adopts in particular a 5 -liter V8 in place of the 6 -liter V12 of the terrible clk gtr. Mercedes must commit to producing 25 road models, and presents the first of them in Le Mans, just before the competition. This is the car bearing the number 002the first having had the honor to be sprayed in order to satisfy the German approval process.
On the race side, one of the two CLK-LMs engaged will be placed in pole position, driven at almost 230 km/h on average (!) By Bernd Schneider, before abandoning on engine failure from the second hour of running, a consequence of an assisted steering pump problem. The second car knows the same misfortune within an hour, even though no weakness had been detected during the 10,000 km of tests carried out during the preparation. A huge disappointment for Mercedes and AMG, of course.
The premature end of the FIA GT championship at the end of the 1998 season (which she wins high) will release Mercedes from her obligations to produce the 25 CLK-LM initially announced. There will therefore be a single copy of this sporting adventure of the CLK-LM street version (pronounce ruspseneversion, or “street version” in French), which will spend several years in the hands of a Japanese collector, who will separate in 2013 to give it up to a Frenchman who will have the good taste to exhibit it in September 2015 as part of the second edition of the Chantilly Arts and elegance Richard Mille, an event which has imposed itself as an unavoidable meeting. This is where the friend Eddy had the privilege of approaching him for a moment he still remembers.
“It was Saturday morning, I got up very early so as to attend the setting up of cars participating in the elegance competition, and I was with a friend who knew that this car would be there. She got off the truck while driving, and I remember a pretty v8 noise that was nothing monstrous. The owner brought it to us for the photo shoot, and as the car was still almost the only one on the meadow, so we were able to turn around. The guy was nice, very cooperative, he was even he, accompanied by his mechanic, who offered to dismantle the elements of the body! I do not know what he was doing in life, but I remember that he also had a clK GTR of racing, and another road in addition to the CLK LM. Some time later I had seen him in Montlhéry where he brought the CLK GTR with which he intended to turn, but that had been refused to him because of the very bad condition of the coating, and the risk that this represented for the car. It’s weird, I remember a very nice guy but I have never seen him since that time even when we always come across the same people in these events devoted to exceptional cars. Mystery…”
To discover the rich photographic production of Eddy, we highly recommend its Instagram page.
