One to Buy: ex-Jenson Button 2004 Mercedes-Benz CLK DTM
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To celebrate Bernd Scneider’s 2003 DTM Drivers’ title and back-to-back Team Championships for the second generation CLK in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, Mercedes-Benz cooked up its most extreme road going special for years: the CLK DTM AMG.
Inspired by the radical Class 1 racing C209, in April 2004 the Mercedes-Benz racing department (HWA AG) unveiled a limited edition CLK DTM, just 100 of which would be built for VIP customers at a starting price of nearly €250,000. A further 80 copies were later produced with a Convertible instead of the original Coupe bodyshell.
One of the British customers to get his hands on a new CLK DTM was BAR Honda F1 driver, Jenson Button. Chassis WDB2093422F138224 was delivered to Button on the isle of Jersey in December 2004 after a breakthrough season that had seen him claim third in the F1 Drivers’ Championship behind the Ferraris of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello. Button was a model of consistency during the ‘04 campaign; he stood on the podium ten times and only twice finished outside of the top five.
Ironically, despite having been Honda’s main man in F1 for many years, Button scored all but one of his 15 Grand Prix wins driving cars with Mercedes-Benz engines (six for Brawn and eight for McLaren).
On November 14th, Jenson Button’s Obsidian Black Metallic CLK DTM will be going under the hammer at Iconic Auctioneers’ NEC Motor Show sale in Birmingham. Remarkably, chassis ‘138225’ was retained by Button for the remainder of his F1 career. The car’s second owner, a Japanese collector, purchased it in 2019 and has now entrusted its sale to Iconic Auctioneers.
According to Iconic Auctioneers: “The history file contains the Guernsey Registration Certificate in Jenson Button's name and the Mercedes-Benz AMG Milton Keynes - European Conformity Technical data sheet. There are service invoices at 4519km, 5054km and 9659km before its export to Japan in 2019. The speedometer reading was 18,114km (11,321 miles) when recently photographed and the car is supplied with its unique CLK DTM owners’ wallet, two keys, full tool kit, tyre compressor, oil filter and first aid kit.”
