Sportscar racing

It was in 1952 that Mercedes-Benz returned to racing after the war, again with Alfred Neubauer as team manager. Their small and underpowered^{[citation needed]} gull-winged Mercedes-Benz 300SL, won several races in 1952 including the 24 hours of Le Mans, the Carrera Panamericana, and did well in other important races such as the Mille Miglia.

Mercedes-Benz was also dominant in sports racing cars during the 1950s. The Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR was derived from the W196 Formula One car for use in the 1955 World Sportscar Championship season. At Le Mans that year, a disaster occurred in which a Mercedes-Benz 300SLR collided with another car, killing more than eighty spectators. The team went on to win the two remaining races of the season, and won the Manufacturer's championship, but it had already been planned at the beginning of that year that the company would retire its teams at the end of the 1955 season.^[4] In fact in the aftermath of the Le Mans disaster, it would be several decades until Mercedes-Benz returned to front line motorsport.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mercedes returned to competition through the tuning company AMG (later to become a Mercedes-Benz subsidiary), which entered the big Mercedes-Benz 300SEL 6.3 V8 sedan in the Spa 24 Hours and the European Touring Car Championship.

In 1985 Mercedes-Benz returned to sports car racing, as an engine supplier for the Group C cars of the Sauber team. The first cars produced by this relationship, the Sauber C8 and C9 were not particularly successful until the C9 recorded a victory at the 1989 Le Mans race. After this watershed, Mercedes increased its involvement further,^{[citation needed]} and the next sportscar produced by the partnership was called the Mercedes-Benz C11, although the chassis was still built by Sauber. Mercedes-Benz enjoyed some success, but eventually withdraw from sportscar racing after a dismal 1991 season.

Mercedes-Benz returned to sportscar racing in 1997, with the CLK GTR which was entered in the new FIA GT Championship world championship series. The successor to this car, the CLR was a spectacular failure. It was entered in the 1999 Le Mans race, but a series of accidents involving the car flipping brought about the cancellation of the CLR project.

Touring cars

It was intended that Mercedes-Benz would enter rallying with the Mercedes-Benz W201 in the early 1980s.^{[citation needed]} Yet, as all wheel drive and turbochargers were introduced by the competition (Audi Quattro) at that time, this was cancelled. Instead the W201 ended up being used in the DTM touring car series from 1988, with the car again being prepared by AMG,^{[citation needed]} who became an official partner and continue to enter the new DTM to the present day. Mercedes currently competes in the new DTM championship.