One to Buy: 4 time race-winning 1990 Mercedes-Benz C11
/
Having created arguably the most effective sports racing car ever seen for the 1955 season (the W196S 300 SLR), Mecedes-Benz made the decision to abandon top flight competition as a consequence of Pierre Levegh’s fatal accident at that year’s Le Mans 24 Hours where the Frenchman’s Silver Arrow flew into the crowd and killed 83 spectators.
Mercedes made its highly anticipated return to the World Sportscar Championship 30 years later as an engine supplier to the Sauber team. Steady improvement throughout the subsequent 1986 and ‘87 seasons convinced Mercedes to become Sauber’s official team partner for 1988 when the black AEG-sponsored C9 won five World Championship events and finished second in the Constructor standings to Jaguar.
1989 saw the further uprated Sauber Mercedes C9 (now painted a traditional all-silver colour scheme) win all but one race on its way to Driver and Constructor championship honours. Remarkably, it was a similar story for 1990 when the new C11 repeated the exact same feat.
Currently on the market at Mechatronik’s showroom in Pleidelsheim is a veteran of that all-conquering 1990 campaign: chassis 03.
Chassis 03 initially served as the T-car at Silverstone and Spa, after which Jean-Louis Schlesser and Mauro Baldi piloted it to four consecutive pole-to-flag victories at the Spa, Dijon, Nurburgring and Montreal 480km races en route to their 1990 world title.
The car was then prepared for the 1991 Le Mans 24 Hours, but having led for 17 hours, chassis 03 retired with under three hours to go owing to a broken alternator bracket that allowed the water pump belt to come off.
At the end of 1990, chassis 03 was sold to a major collector with whom it remained for the next 30 years. The car departed for Mechatronik in 2021 and it is today offered as arguably one of the most important Group C cars in existence.
