Today’s wish list car comes courtesy of one very careful owner. This is an old, gloriously supercharged Mercedes-Benz CLK DTM AMG Coupe previously owned by Jenson Button, and it’s coming up for auction.
Which means someone with between £400,000 and £500,000 of disposable money has the opportunity to purchase one of the finest driving machines ever built by human hands.
Literally. You all know how AMG hand-built each individual engine, and this one was no different. It’s a 5.4-litre eight-cylinder, with a socking great supercharger bolted onto its mighty flanks and a sprinkling of Affalterbach’s finest witchcraft, to produce around 580bhp and 590lb ft.
As such, this old Benz could crack on to 62mph in under four seconds and onto a limited top speed – where permitted – of 199mph. “It was not,” as TG’s Tom Ford opined when he drove one, “for the faint-hearted.”
This one’s for the I-want-a-rare-Jenson-Button-owned-Merc-hearted. He bought the carbon fibred-up monster back in December 2004 when it was brand new and owned it for 15 years before selling it onto a Japanese collector in 2019.
Merc only built 100 CLK DTM AMG Coupes – in honour of DTM hero Bernd Schneider’s DTM heroics – and of that 100, just 40 were built in right-hand-drive. So yeah, it’s rare.
Glorious, Batman-esque spec too. It carries just 11,321 miles, has a documented service history, comes with the “unique CLK DTM owner wallet”, two sets of keys, a tool kit and tyre compressor, oil filter and even a first aid kit. Might need the latter – this thing’s likely to give you high blood pressure.
Iconic Auctioneers reckons on anywhere between £400,000 and £500,000 when it’s rolled out for auction on Saturday 14 November.