Mercedes CLK GTR: The ULTIMATE Group Test Part 3 | Carfection 4K

these three spellbinding silver supercars are all linked by the amazing gt1 class of the mid-1990s we're at the famous millbrook proving ground and these cars have been brought together with the help of dk engineering and a couple of very generous owners to whom we owe huge thanks if you're subscribed to the car fection channel then you'll know that in the first two films in this series we drove the inimitable mclaren f1 and then the car that porsche built to beat it the 911 gt1 now we're going to dive into the car that mercedes built to beat both of those the extraordinary clk gtr with its bodywork on it's like a caricature of a mercedes perfectly shrunken in some places hugely distended in others but undressed not something you can do on your own it looks like a pure eraser in terms of stretching the rules this was a bungee cord to porsche's elastic band and it looks fantastic there is a carbon and aluminium honeycomb monocoque at the centre of it all but almost everything seems to be carbon it's no wonder it was the most expensive of the three in period retailing at a cool 1.1 million pounds the huge carbon air box dominates proceedings in the back sitting atop a 6.9 liter m297 engine putting out 604 brake horsepower at 6800 rpm and 572 pounds foot at 5250 rpm easily the most torque of the trio one of my favorite stories from this whole era is that to develop the clk gtr race car mercedes secretly purchased a mclaren f1 gtr firstly this enabled the team to benchmark the competition and later they switched the bmw v12 for their own naturally aspirated v12 and modified the bodywork to mimic what they wanted to achieve aerodynamically yes they hacked up a mclaren f1 let that settle in while i open the small driver's door and contemplate the automotive equivalent of potholing oh my word oh what a workout i think this might just be the most awkward car i've ever got into i'm slightly amazed i fit it is so snug in here obviously you had to take the steering wheel off again probably the heaviest removable steering wheel i've ever encountered so pop that back on here got it easy this is the most extreme of the three cars in terms of its interior and yet also the most ordinary or mundane i suppose because from a you know this feels like a racing car there is no doubt these huge sills that you've got to get across and it's tiny in here your cheap bar gel there's even less room for the passengers legs down there and yet you've obviously got switch gear from a mid late 90s mercedes in here sort of the vent controls like this it's sort of put where it can be the vents up here as well it's just sort of this bizarre mix and yet it feels so special because it's just so tiny in here clutch it's actually quite quite a long throw pretty heavy clutch and then you've got the paddles back here so it's a sequential box and this is for selecting reverse i've heard interesting things about this gearbox so we'll have to see but essentially yes you treat it like a sequential but with paddles so you have to remember to keep coming down the box every time you come to a halt but wow you can tell that this is a race car that has then been turned into a road car because they had to and you can actually see it says 7 of 25 in the middle of the speedo here which goes all the way up to 340 kilometers an hour interesting that they've got the speedo actually in the middle and then the rev counter is across the right because you thought it would be the other way around really it looks like there's obviously no storage in here actually these cubby holes which are obviously covered in plastic just for the moment just so we don't scratch the carbon fiber getting in and out but they're pretty cavenous on there and so yeah you can fit some shopping in there you can go go shopping if you wanted to go in this and cause quite a stir and take up several parking bays then yeah you get your shopping home again you can see in the headline of this one but you can see the the roll cage clearly that goes around the windscreen frame here and and then disappears off into the back there and obviously we've got this roof scoop up here as well that you can hear like the mclaren f1 a couple of little bits the key fairly mundane sort of mercedes key and can't put the windows up and down but there are actually just vents back here which seemed to be open the whole time it's an extraordinary extraordinary car this i can't get over how intimate it is right time to get out [Music] instantly when you're putting the wheel on and off if you line the top of the three stars up with the top of the spline there then that's the easiest way to line it up now while i extricate myself from the cockpit and i should point out that i did later manage it with the steering wheel in place here's james cottingham of dk engineering with a few more details on this specific car that chassis 7 which of the 20 cars built so they obviously planned on 25 they did build 26 in the end but 20 coupes and then in the end five roadsters plus one the prototype became a register as well um it's got the uh the top the totten played interior which is from 72 which is such a nice nod to that and i'm sure there's a link there you know we've said it is you know it's chassis seven sterling's lucky number was seven the seven two two you know 300 slr there's a clear link there um and i'm pretty sure that car was used for some of the sort of press paraphernalia at the time not all of it but some of it and you know that car and chassis iii i think it was had that interior so it's quite easy sort of relatively easy to try and pinpoint it now the press at the time were a little lukewarm about the gtr so i'm intrigued to see what it feels like today this is the car i was most nervous about driving outside because it's so intimidating just to be in and yet as much as it's intimidating [Applause] it's actually sort of it's just bizarre having all this mercedes stuff in here [Applause] it's a much bigger base here engine still massively responsive we've got about a hundred hundred more of torque in here but at the mclaren we've also got a lot more weight 14 and 40 kilos this is so about 300 kilos more than the mclaren all right wow again just rises up that extra trouble else you have to put in over the race car the gearbox is better than i'd expected actually much much better than i'd expected asr just kicking in there [Music] you push the clutch all the way down to make sure you're in the next gear no auto blitz you have to be a bit careful on the downshifts but really nicely weighted steering it does feel like a road car much more so than i thought it would there's an element to this i suppose if you're going to compare it to something else a modern day in the seas then it would be the sls black series just for that sort of total directness that you have through everything but also that monster engine that again dominates proceedings [Applause] and feels really light in here actually instead of lighting but it stays so flat it feels so wide the way it travels across the road it's initially data you feel it just roll onto his tires but you've got surprising amounts of traction actually you know where you've got a big engine behind you but actually it stays surprisingly flat you look at how it's mounted i'd say because of all that talk i don't feel the extra weight really a little bit of understanding just to actually let you nibble on the front end which is really nice just quite [Music] reassuring great pedal just doesn't give you quite the confidence perhaps before but it's amazing as well how much you kind of forget about the claustrophobia you feel just from sitting in it this is really special wow [Music] as you can probably tell my pre-drive anxieties weren't justified i loved it although at over 4.8 meters long it is like the porsche a huge car from behind the wheel it feels much shorter it feels like it looks with the bodywork off almost like a big go-kart despite only having 800 cc on the f1 v12 the mercedes engine feels much bigger chester hill in mclaren not quite as free revving but more blood and thunder on the dyno this particular car was apparently putting out a monster 670 brake horsepower and i can well believe it the biggest surprise is that it has some genuine road manners it is drivable not recalcitrant despite being a sort of unwanted necessity a byproduct of a successful race program and it really was successful as the v12 engine gtr and the v8 engine lm it dominated the fia gt championship in 1997 and 1998 to such an extent that nobody wanted to compete against this in 1999 and so the fia killed the class the mercedes never won them all though and just to be clear this wasn't the flying lemon car either that was the clr after receiving a drubbing in 1997 porsche in fact bought out its own version of the gtr the carbon-tubbed gt198 and despite not having the outright speed of the other cars in the gt1 class it was more reliable and that bought it victory over 24 hours in lasath i've actually driven that winning car a few times and it is totally different to the earlier 911 gt1s much flightier and much more like the cramped mercedes to sit in there we are then f1 911 gt1 and clk gtr wow what an experience just to be around these cars was extraordinary but to drive them back to back that's something that as a teenager watching and reading about these cars i never even dreamed i'd get to experience it was fascinating to compare and contrast to have control of two of the best angriest naturally aspirated v12s ever produced shifting carefully with one manual gearbox and feeling utterly confident with the other feeling the difference between a relatively old-school race chassis and a new one they are things i'll certainly never forget if i had to choose so tricky because they are so different but let's put it like this if i could have one just to look at then it would be the gorgeously engineered mercedes undressed with the clam shells sitting either side if i had a track for a day or two and could choose one car then it would be the porsche because it's the one you feel that you can grab by the scruff of the neck push hard and really get stuck in dynamically and if i could choose one for the rest of my life it would be the mclaren it's not perfect but its quirks and idiosyncrasies are part of the reason that it would endlessly fascinate and absorb and oh my word that engine all three but perhaps especially the clk gtr really do feel like the precursors to the hypercars we have now but i'm not sure anything that has come since has been more extreme had more purpose had more wow factor than these the hybrid hypercars of a few years ago for example 918 spyder p1 and laferrari arrived with much fanfare but none have racing pedigree none has an engine spine tingling as the f1s nor packaging is pert and clever and i'd argue that none has the sheer visual drama physical presence and road racer feel of the clk gtr and 911 gt1 that connection to motorsport really does add a depth to these cars stories too the mclaren f1 would arguably be the greatest even if it hadn't raced but that victory at le mans in 95 it seals the deal meanwhile the focused homologation intent of the porsche and mercedes gives them such a pure feeling of purpose they make a mclaren senna look soft they're compromised as road cars no doubt but that compromise also imbues them with an incredible genuine competition character the latest lmh lamar hybrid rules are aimed at a return to these gt1 glory days and they may yet yield a new crop of homologation specials we can only hope the valkyrie t-50 and project one promise much too but whatever cars come in the future they will be standing on the shoulders of this spectacular boundary breaking trinity thank you once again to the very generous owners and to everyone at dk engineering for all their help thank you very much for watching and if you enjoyed the films do please subscribe to the channel not only so that you don't miss out on what we get up to in the future but because it really does help us to keep producing this sort of content

Channel: Carfection

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Id: ZlLy3Va1a30

Length: 15min 4sec (904 seconds)

Published: Fri May 21 2021