Mercedes Flambé: C-Class Goes Up In Flames At DTM Presentation In Düsseldorf

Mercedes Flambé: C-Class Goes Up In Flames At DTM Presentation In Düsseldorf
Posted April 23rd, 2007 At 10:00 AM CST

I don't know how we managed to overlook this story, but in case you missed it (as we did), spectators at a DTM presentation in Düsseldorf witnessed an insanely-hot show last Monday courtesy of Mercedes' Bruno Spengler. During the presentation, Spengler, who was piloting a 2002 CLK DTM clad in a 2008 Mercedes C-Class DTM shell, rocked a few doughnuts for the crowd in the middle of his run, an act that apparantly caused the rear brake to overheat.

The result is a C-Class cooked to what appears to be medium to medium well; thankfully no one was injured, and the DTM presentation continued as planned.

To watch the carnage for yourself and get a glimpse of what would happen if DTM ever made its way to Iraq, hit play, sit back and enjoy (warning: lyrics are most certainly NSFW); and for the official DaimlerChrysler statement as to the events that transpired, keep scrolling for the corporate press release.

Enjoy.

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE

DTM Presentation, Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf, Apr 16, 2007
An incident, in which nobody got injured, occurred during the DTM presentation programme at Düsseldorf’s Königsallee. The rear of a former DTM race car (Mercedes-Benz CLK-DTM from the year 2002), driven by Bruno Spengler, caught fire due to an overheated brake. The car was a five-year-old race car, that had been fitted with the bodywork of the new C-Class for demonstration runs. The fire brigade extinguished the fire within three minutes. “First of all the important thing: nothing happened to anyone”, said Bruno Spengler. “I noticed smoke coming into the cockpit, I stopped immediately, I got out of the car and discovered that the rear of the car had caught fire due to the untypical overheating of the rear brake when I spun doing some doughnuts.” After an initial inspection, the team found that the car can be repaired. Gerhard Ungar, HWA’s technical director: “The so-called doughnuts (spinning of the car on the spot), put untypical strain on the brakes because of a lack of cooling airstream. Therefore, the brakes on Bruno’s car today overheated and caught fire. The reason of the fire is still being investigated.” The quick intervention by the fire brigade has shown that the safety concept made up beforehand by the fire brigade, the police and the ITR was effective. The event continued as planned.