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Throughout the 1990s Mercedes-Benz pursued a very successful campaign in the German national (DTM) and international touring car championships (ITC) with it's C-Class tourer built to Class 1 regulations. The campaign brought race wins and championships to the works squad and, considered more important by the boardroom at Mercedes-Benz, a much needed kudos to the Mercedes brand. At the tail end of the 1996 season, spiralling costs in the high-tech international series forced Mercedes' rivals Opel and Alfa Romeo to withdraw from the championship. Mercedes were desperate not to lose the momentum that the Motorsport department had built up over the decade and looked around for a new challenge. Super Touring was the predominant category at the time with both Germany and England having very successful versions of this type of racing in the STW and BTCC series. The company felt, however, that the Super Touring category wasn't right for the Mercedes brand. Plans for a C-Class super tourer were drawn up but eventually in December '96 the green light was given for a new project. Mercedes' AMG squad would build an all-new GT racer based on the CLK to race in the newly FIA acredited Grand Touring Championships - alongside Porsche and BMW. A possible entry in the Le Mans 24 hour race was also being considered. This was a tall order. FIA regulations stated that all GT1 cars had to be based on a production vehicle. As it was, the CLK saloon was unsuitable as a front-line GT contender so AMG had to construct a road-going CLK sportscar to base the racer on......and the first race of the 1997 season was to be on the 13th of April at Hockenheim in just four months time. The car was built around a carbon fibre/kevlar chassis, mated to a Vl2 engine derived from the Mercedes SL600 road car. AMG's experience in producing high-performance road versions of Mercedes products helped in this choice. With much of the experience it gained in running the C-Class ITC cars, the AMG team built the CLK on ITC lines with easily detachable front suspension (actually from from the C Class racer) and engine/transmission. Much of its aerodynamics benefited from ITC experience as well.
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