When I decided to attend Ultrace Dusseldorf for their first iteration outside Poland, I expected the show to follow their usual theme of modified cars with a few motorsport icons spread amongst them. But the moment I set foot into Areal Böhler, I was dumbstruck. Historic motorsports with icons from Porsche, BMW and Mercedes were scattered along with the usual modified display. During the setup day, as the main hall was busy with cars being moved into location, I headed out and into a smaller hall next to it. This small hall housed only four cars, but those four cars pulled me closer than the rest of the show.
That hall contained four special Mercedes-Benz cars from the museum, and each car had a story to tell. The story I was looking for was that of the C292. Mercedes was a force to reckon with in motorsports prior to World War 2, and after the war, it was back on track to decimate competition until the 1955 Le Mans tragedy occurred. Mercedes-Benz shut down their motorsports operation and stayed away for over 30 years. A young Peter Sauber built the C9 with a Mercedes engine, and the performance of this car coaxed Mercedes back into motorsports. The C9 and its successor C11 dominated the World Sportscar Championship at the end of the 1980s and into the early 1990s. As Mercedes got comfortable in their winning ways, the next generation was built as the C291. But the car was a disappointment compared to the previous cars. The contender for the 1992 season was supposed to be a better version of the C291 with all its shortcomings rectified. This was called the C292 (or C291B if you ask Sauber) and was prepped to be the next big thing. But due to several reasons including the rising cost and the series falling apart, Mercedes pulled out of the sport even before the C292 went testing, and the car never saw a competitive outing.
Standing in front of one of just two cars ever built was surreal to say the least. The event did not open to the public till the weekend, so when I stepped into the hall on the Friday before, I saw the empty hall with four cars lined up next to each other sitting under soft boxes. The four cars were the C9, C11, C292 and the C112 road car prototype. Having been lucky enough to see the C9 and C11 in action at historic racing and at Goodwood Festival of Speed, my eyes and attention went directly to the C292. Sitting next to two of the predecessors, the C292 looked much closer to the C11 in features, with the front wedge almost similar. But the difference was in the headlights and the air inlet and exit louvre, with the C292 having a much cleaner-looking front end compared to the C11. The C291, which was not on display here, had an even busier front end with a larger air inlet and exit louvres. The body line was similar to the C11 but dipped much closer to the doors, and the back end was almost similar apart from the wheel arches, which were boxier at the end on the C11, while those on the C292 were more rounded and streamlined. The C9, C11 and the C292 all had mid-mounted rear wings, but that is where the similarity stopped. The rear wing on the C292 had two horizontal elements, while the end plates were so huge that they were almost as tall as the car.
As I wandered out of the hall for now, as the crew finished setting up the cars for the big weekend ahead, I wandered back into the main hall where three more special Mercedes were on display. One was the original Silver Arrow from 1937, the W125. The car was built for grand prix racing and went on to clinch the championship from the hands of Auto Union (now Audi). Both teams were bankrolled by the Nazi party as a propaganda tool. The car had to meet a minimum weight requirement of 750 kg, so the paint was stripped back and the car raced in the silver of the bare aluminium, which gave rise to the Silver Arrows name. Apart from these sat two other cars. One was the CLK GTR "Straßenversion" street version, the homologation car for the 1997 Mercedes GT1 race car which, similar to the C9 and C11, went on to win the championship in great fashion. The car on display here was one of the prototypes and is currently part of the Loh collection in Germany.
The car next to it is a car Mercedes would rather forget about. Le Mans has been a proving ground for sports car racing, and victory at Le Mans alone is sometimes considered more valuable than winning the championship. For the 1999 Le Mans, Mercedes, through AMG and HWA, commissioned a car just for Le Mans. It was to be a spiritual successor to the C11 and the C292, which never raced, and the direct successor to the CLK GTR and CLK LM. The CLR was much more streamlined than the CLK GTR and had a lower body line. The car did not have to abide by the homologation rules, and therefore AMG and HWA had no restrictions. The car underwent severe testing, completing around 22,000 miles before arriving at Circuit Le Sarthe for the 24-hour endurance race. Over the weekend, even before the race started, one of the three cars entered flew off the circuit, crashing. The same car then flew again on the day of the race during the warm-up. By then, Mercedes understood something was wrong with their car, but nothing could be done apart from some minor fixes, and the drivers were asked to avoid getting too close to other cars. Peter Dumbreck was battling for second position when the front end of his car took off, and the car somersaulted right into the trees. That was the end for Mercedes in sports car racing. They pulled out the remaining car (now on display here) and pulled the shutters on their motorsport division.
Later on Friday, as I stood in the Mercedes hall, where the display now contained the C9, C292, C112 and the CLK GTR, I tried compressing the whole 1990s Mercedes motorsport endeavour. 1955 was still an open wound even 30 years later when Sauber built the C9. But the potential of the car attracted Mercedes back into the sport, and since then, with the C11, CLK GTR and CLK LM, they fought hard with competitors for dominance and came out on top. But each of these cars was still run by external teams with factory backing. The C9, C11, C291 and C292 were built by Sauber, while the CLK GTR, CLK LM and the CLR were built by AMG and HWA. This showed the cautious approach Mercedes took, and their fear was realised once again at Circuit Le Sarthe with the CLR. For a company steeped in motoring and motorsports, it will always be difficult to stay out of motorsport, especially sports car racing, and that is sort of true for Mercedes. Even though Mercedes has no official involvement in motorsport apart from Formula 1, there are still customer and privateer teams using machines built at Affalterbach fighting for glory across different series and classes. I still believe that, if circumstances permit, Mercedes would be back in the top class of sports car racing. I wondered about this as I clinked glasses with a few of the HWA staff as we chatted about the future of Mercedes in racing while admiring the past parked right next to us.
