2021 Gooding Pebble Beach Sale (Mercedes-Benz AMG CLK GTR Strassenversion Announced)

A 1998 Mercedes-Benz AMG CLK GTR Strassenversion is for sale at the Gooding Pebble Beach 2021 classic car auction during Monterey Car Week in mid-August in California, USA.

1998 Mercedes-Benz AMG CLK GTR Strassenversion on sale at Gooding Pebble Beach 2021 classic car auction — © Gooding

Gooding announced a 1998 Mercedes-Benz AMG CLK GTR Strassenversion (Estimate: $8,500,000 – $10,000,000) as the top Mercedes-Benz on offer at the Pebble Beach 2021 sale. The car was the ninth of only 25 built as road-going versions built of the FIA GT championship cars. Mercedes-Benz cars dominated the series and took the championship in both 1997 and 1998.

Gooding Pebble Beach Sale 2021

Gooding & Company will hold its traditional Pebble Beach sale on 13 and 14 August 2021 at the Pebble Beach Parc du Concours during the annual Monterey Motoring Week in California, USA. It will be a traditional live auction.

In 2021, Gooding earned $107,045,410 at Pebble Beach selling 115 of 132 lots for a sell-through rate of 87% and an average price of $930,829 per lot.

After Monterey Week 2020 was canceled, Gooding earned $14,497,443 in the replacement Geared Online 2020 auction selling 55 of the 77 lots on offer for a sell-through rate of 71%. Five cars sold for more than a million dollar.

In comparison, at Pebble Beach in 2019, Gooding earned $76,824,740 with a sell-through rate of 77% – 108 of 140 lots offered — and 17 cars sold for over a million dollar each. This was already down on the $116.5 million earned in 2018 and the record $129.8 million earned in 2016 at the peak of the market.

Mercedes-Benz AMG CLK GTR

Since its inception in 1967, AMG became an ever-present organization in the story of Mercedes-Benz’s performance and racing efforts, complementing the marque’s status of producing some of the world’s finest motorcars. When the FIA and promoter Stéphane Ratel introduced a new series called the FIA GT Championship in 1997, Mercedes-Benz and AMG were tasked with creating a car for the event based on the new CLK coupe. In just 128 days, AMG had test mules on the track, developing what would become one of Mercedes-Benz’s most iconic racing cars of the century – the CLK GTR.

With a mid-engine built on a chassis developed by Lola Composites of the UK, the GTR came powered by a modified, six-liter version of the M120 V-12 that was offered in numerous Mercedes-Benz road cars. The 1997 season went well for the German marque’s new creation, with the team winning six of the series’ 11 rounds and claiming the FIA GT championship against stiff competition. 1998 ushered in utter domination in the GT1 category for Mercedes-Benz, with the marque winning every round of that year’s championship. One of the unique requirements of the FIA GT series was that to homologate a model for inclusion in the championship, manufacturers had to build no fewer than 25 road-going versions of the cars to be raced, resulting in some of the most collectible and desirable cars of the era, including the Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR offered here.

1998 Mercedes-Benz AMG CLK GTR Strassenversion at Gooding Pebble Beach 2021

The 1998 Mercedes-Benz AMG CLK GTR Strassenversion (Estimate: $8,500,000 – $10,000,000) on sale in the Gooding Pebble Beach 2021 classic car auction was the ninth of 25 built, including 20 coupes and five roadsters. Based on the same architecture of the racing cars, but with subtle changes that make it more roadworthy, this GTR boasts a 6.9-liter engine that produces the same level of horsepower as the racing GTR. Its interior is also trimmed like that of any Mercedes-AMG road car, with leather and Alcantara or suede cloaking all necessary surfaces. The dashboard is typical of 1990s Mercedes-Benz, with the analog gauge cluster looking peculiarly pedestrian in such a wildly powerful machine.

This CLK GTR overall presents as a pure race car in its truest essence, and it makes an incredible impression on all who are lucky enough to witness it. Intensely purposeful and relentlessly attractive, and, although it is festooned with scoops, vents, and aerodynamic appendages, the car still remains a true Mercedes-Benz, through and through. Sold new in 1997 to a buyer in Germany, this example has switched very few hands, being purchased by the consignor in 2018. At the time of cataloguing, the odometer displayed just 1,442 km, making it an exceedingly special automotive treasure. It also comes accompanied by a plethora of important items originally delivered with the car, including manuals, the original carbon front undertray, which was at some point replaced, its hard shipping case containing its numbered battery charger, a torque wrench and socket for the wheels, and wooden blocks to rest the car on while using its onboard hydraulic jacks.

Top Mercedes-Benz Prices at Auction

1998 Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR Roadster black — 1998 Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR Roadster © Bonhams

This seminal Mercedes-Benz comes to auction at a time when enthusiasm for homologation specials could not be stronger. This CLK GTR certainly is an eyecatcher but if it exceeds its estimate of $8,500,000 – $10,000,000, it will become only the third Mercedes-Benz car to sell for over $10 million at public auction.

Even the lower estimate is quite a jump from the mid-estimate model record $4.5 million that RM Sotheby’s achieved for the seemingly same 1998 Mercedes-Benz AMG CLK GTR, serial no. 09/25 at the Monterey 2018 sale. One of the roadsters achieved only $3 million at the Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed 2015 sale.

Monterey Motoring Week 2021

Most of the traditional Monterey Motoring Week events returned in mid-August 2021 after the cancellations in 2020. Top classic car auctioneers with sales during Monterey Week 2021 included Gooding (Pebble Beach), Bonhams (Quail Lodge), RM Sotheby’s, and Mecum.

Monterey 2021 Auction Results: