My Model Garage

I think few people would call the Mercedes Benz CLK GTR beautiful. Looks was not the reason I added this beast to my model garage, the reason is because the CLK GTR is such a rare bird, with only 35 build it is one of the rarest MB's. It was also one of the most expensive cars when it went on sale. What I love about this car: The wheel design and that big fin. The CLK GTR must have one of the widest tail fins on any car. Even though the FIA GT1 class was cancelled for 1999, Mercedes was obliged to finally deliver the required 25 road cars they had promised. An initial road car was built in 1997 in order to meet initial FIA requirements, but this car was retained by Mercedes. For the other 25 road cars, each was built by AMG at the Affalterbach factory between winter of 1998 and summer of 1999 and differed only slightly from the race car.

All of the 25 CLK GTRs ever built were left hand drive except for one which was specially built for Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei. Driver comfort and refinements were at a minimum in the construction of the road cars as Mercedes-Benz wished to not only offer customers a true race car, but also to attempt to keep the price low. Leather was used in the interior and an air conditioning system was offered. Two small storage lockers were also built underneath each upward swinging door. Traction control was also added for driver safety. The car retained much of the design of the original CLK GTR instead of the CLK LM, including the V12 and many stylistic elements. One key difference was the rear wing, which used a hoop-style integrated wing in place of the separate racing wing. From the otherwise unrelated standard production Mercedes-Benz CLK, only the instrumentation, front grille and the four headlamps were used.

And indeed it is lightning-fast. Normally, the front axle is driven in the 4MOTION system - including on the all-wheel drive Volkswagen Tiguan; the rear axle only gets ten percent of propulsive power. This saves on fuel. Not until necessary - based on the specific powertrain and carriageway situation - is the rear axle brought into play, step by step. This is done by an electrohydraulic all-wheel drive clutch. An important difference compared to the previous generation 4MOTION: no speed differences are needed between the front and rear axles to activate the all-wheel drive clutch, since pressure is built up via an electric pump. The multi-plate clutch system itself was integrated in the rear differential. The pressure reservoir is supplied with oil by an electric pump with a working pressure of 30 bar. An electronic control unit computes the ideal drive torque for the rear axle and regulates, via a valve, how much oil pressure is transferred to the working piston of the multi-plate clutch.

Here, the surface pressure on the clutch plates is proportional to the torque desired at the rear axle. The amount of transferred torque may be continuously varied by altering the magnitude of the pressure applied to the clutch plates. The system operates independent of wheel slip, since the working pressure is always available. When the Tiguan is driven off from a standstill or accelerated, wheelspin of the front wheels is fully prevented, since the control unit regulates the torque distribution based on dynamic axle loads. In extreme cases, nearly 100 percent of the drive torque can be directed to the rear axle. New aboard the Tiguan is the optional XDS electronic differential lock. It is a functional extension of the electronic locks already integrated via ESP. XDS improves handling when driving quickly through bends, and it calibrates the vehicle more in the direction of "neutral" by preventing potential wheelspin of the unloaded wheel at the inside of the curve by active brake intervention, thereby improving traction. In updating the new Tiguan, Volkswagen has also updated the equipment lines and engine line-up of its best-selling SUV.