This Mercedes CLK DTM AMG Duo Could Be Yours For Nearly £800k

The spiritual precursor to the hardcore Black Series cars, the Mercedes CLK DTM AMG is undoubtedly one of the coolest cars to wear the badges of the Affalterbach-based performance division.

See, usually when a car company wants to celebrate its motorsport success with a special edition road car, you wind up paying over the odds for some garish stickers and a numbered plaque on the interior. When Mercedes won its fourth DTM championship on the bounce in 2003, though, it went a whole lot further.

HWA, the AMG-linked outfit that was behind those years of DTM success (and is now making that jaw-dropping 190E 2.5-16 restomod), took the humble CLK coupe and turned it into a fire-breathing monster.

In went Merc’s supercharged 5.4-litre V8, good for 574bhp. Underneath, it was kitted out with adjustable suspension, ceramic brake discs, reinforced driveshafts and a mechanical limited-slip diff. It was all topped off with those spectacular carbon fibre box arches and big rear wing on the outside, and one-piece bucket seats and plenty of lightweight carbon trim inside.

Despite using an off-the-shelf five-speed automatic, it would hit 62mph in 3.9 seconds and top out at 199mph in coupe form, easily putting what was still basically a four-seater C-Class coupe on a par with the best the supercar world could offer in 2004, the year it launched. And we say ‘in coupe form’ because despite the CLK DTM AMG being one the most hardcore, performance-focused cars Merc had ever offered, there were rather hilariously 80 Cabriolet versions built in addition to the 100 coupes.

The Cabrio only dropped a tenth of a second in the 0-62mph run, and was electronically limited to 186mph, still making it comfortably the fastest four-seater convertible of its time.

The chance to own either of these very special cars doesn’t come round too often, but if you’re heading to RM Sotheby’s’ upcoming 22 May Milan auction with a particularly massive bag of cash, you could end up walking away with both.

Examples of both the coupe and Cabriolet are heading under the hammer, and while it's not outright stated they’re coming from the same seller, they’ve been photographed in the same place and are both German-market cars, so make of that what you will.

The silver coupe has clocked up a healthy 49,395km (around 30,700 miles), and RM Sotheby’s reckons it’ll fetch between £280,000 and £325,000. The rarer Cabriolet, finished in black, has been enjoyed even more, racking up 71,670km (around 44,500 miles), but despite that, it’s reckoned it’ll be the more expensive of the duo, estimated at between £325,000 and £365,000.

What would your plan be if you parted ways with nearly £800k for this pairing? We’d save the coupe for track days and early morning blasts, and use the drop-top for, say, chasing steam trains down the coast of North Wales.