Not exactly the headline you were expecting to see today, or ever.
It’s not every day that one of the rarest Mercedes-Benz supercars ever built shows up in a place no collector would expect, yet that’s exactly what happened when the Los Angeles FBI shared images of a 2002 Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR Roadster parked quietly inside a federal impound warehouse. The photos felt almost shocking, the low-slung, open-air GT1 relic sitting under fluorescent lighting, surrounded not by concours spectators but by case files and concrete floors. The circumstances surrounding its recovery trace back to Ryan Wedding, a former Olympic-level athlete whose path took a sharp and unexpected turn into the world of fraud and fugitives, landing him on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. But while the story behind the seizure reads like the outline of a documentary, it’s the car itself that makes the headlines, drawing attention to the now eight-figure collector car Mercedes once built for one of the greatest eras of motorsport.
Seeing a CLK-GTR Roadster in any circumstance is unusual, but seeing one in federal custody borders on surreal. Only six examples of the roadster were produced, each essentially a road-legal variant of the GT1 race car Mercedes competed in during the late 1990s. The car carries with it a kind of presence that can’t be replicated. Underneath its body sits a naturally aspirated 6.9L V12, an iconic engine that both delivers impressive numbers and represents an entire era of engineering philosophy. The CLK-GTR belongs to that small family of homologation specials where regulations, ambition, and a bit of madness all come together. Most of these cars disappear into private collections, surfacing only during restoration work or the occasional concours surprise. To see one appear under the banner of a federal investigation feels almost like finding a Rembrandt in the back room of a police precinct.
Ryan Wedding’s fall from elite sport to international fugitive is a story in its own, but the presence of the CLK-GTR Roadster offers a different lens, reminding us how these cars move through the world in ways we rarely consider. They change hands quietly, accumulate histories good and bad, and sometimes resurface in chapters no one could have written. Long after the case details fade, enthusiasts will remember the image of that silver roadster in a fluorescent-lit warehouse.
Source: Los Angeles FBI Facebook
