by He took an ordinary Mercedes W210 – the same “eternal” E-Class from the late 90s – and decided to transform it into the motorsport legend Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR. And yes, he really did it.
The author of this insanely bold project is Johann Ackerman, a South African specialist in aviation sheet metal processing. He says he didn’t plan to create a perfect copy: he just wanted to test “how far one can go”. Well, he went very far.
All body elements are metal, hand-formed, except for the rear bumper made of FRP. Technically, the car remains based on the W210, but he transplanted the A-, B-, and C-pillars from the W208 CLK coupe to replicate the silhouette of the real GTR. So this is not just “cosmetics”, but deep surgery.
Ackerman was so inspired by the process that after completing the car, he admitted in an interview: he wants to make another one – a replica of the ultra-rare CLK GTR Roadster, of which only four exist in the world.
For understanding the scale: the original CLK GTR is a hyper-exotic car created in the late 90s to comply with GT1 regulations. It debuted in 1997 at Hockenheimring and scored 8 wins, 8 pole positions, and two championship titles (team and driver’s). A legend with a capital “L”.
