M297

The CLK GTR was built in 1997 to go GT1 racing, and GT1 racing demanded road cars. AMG supplied them as the Strassenversion and enlarged the M120 V12 to 6,898 cc to do it, giving the engine a new number borrowed from the car’s C297 chassis code. Where the racer used a restricted 6.0-liter unit, the road car carried 612 PS a few centimeters behind the driver’s head, four camshafts and 48 valves breathing through multi-point injection, in a carbon monocoque laid up by Lola.

Two of those cars were finished in SuperSport specification with the 7,291 cc version and 664 PS — the same bore-out AMG had already used for the SL 73. That engine found a second career in Italy. From 2002 Horacio Pagani fitted the 7.3 to every Zonda he built, from the 602 PS of the Zonda F to the 760 PS of the one-off cars, and it stayed in production until 2016, nearly two decades after the coupé that named it had stopped racing.