Sauber-Mercedes C9 World Sports Car gets a wiggle on!!
A soap bar-shaped, earthquake-inducing Silver Arrow which obliterated the opposition during the 1989 World Sportscar Championship, the C9 – built in collaboration with the small Swiss Sauber team – was the car that put Mercedes firmly back on the motorsport map. Now, this example is for sale…
Two hundred and forty-eight miles per hour. That’s the extraordinary, bottom-clenching, cold sweat-inducing top speed the Sauber-Mercedes C9 of Mauro Baldi, Kenny Acheson and Gianfranco Brancatelli recorded on Les Hunaudiéres during qualifying for the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1989.
On race day, it was the sister Silver Arrow of Jochen Mass, Manuel Reuter and Stanley Dickens which clinched victory in the French endurance classic. There was no doubting it – for the first time since the mid 1950s, before it withdrew from international motorsport following the Le Mans tragedy of 1955, Mercedes-Benz was back on top of the motorsport world.
The 750HP, twin-turbo, V8-powered C9 sports-prototype was no less dominant in the World Sportscar Championship in 1989, of which Le Mans was unusually not a part that year. The Silver Arrows vanquished the opposition, scoring eight of a possible nine wins, losing out only at Dijon-Prenois where the blistering heat proved too much for the car’s Michelin tyres to bear. By no means was Mercedes’ path to Group C glory plain sailing, however.
Having provided a degree of support, including the provision of engines, to Sauber from 1985–1987, Mercedes committed to an all-out factory assault in 1988 with the comparatively tiny Zurich-based outfit, coinciding with the launch of its DTM programme with the 190E 2.3-16 saloon. Porsche, its next-door neighbour in Stuttgart who’d dominated the Group C formula with its formidable 956/962 prototype, had benefited enormously from endurance racing, both in terms of technological advancement and corporate image.
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