Some people collect stamps. Others take up gardening. But Ryan Wedding — former Olympic snowboarder — decided to diversify by allegedly smuggling mountains of cocaine and buying one of the rarest, most ludicrous cars ever to grace the Earth: a 2002 Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR Roadster, one of only six ever built. Because if you’re going to become an international fugitive, you might as well do it in style.
Naturally, the FBI was less impressed by the craftsmanship of AMG and more concerned with the billion-dollar drug empire allegedly funding it. They’ve now seized the Roadster — probably with a mix of awe and existential pain — because the government fleet rarely extends beyond beige SUVs and sadness.
This isn’t just any Mercedes. The coupe version is already rarer than good manners on the M25, with only 20 ever built. But the Roadster? Just six. Six! The kind of number you’d expect for something like the Queen’s private slippers, not a road-legal Le Mans refugee with headlights. It’s worth around $13 million, which is enough to buy a small island, several yachts, and a lifetime supply of tyres for when you inevitably drive it like an idiot.
And this isn’t even the first CLK GTR Roadster to pass through criminal hands. Vijay Mallya, former Force India F1 boss and current “international man with more lawyers than friends,” once owned another. Meaning statistically, one in three CLK GTR Roadsters has belonged to someone the authorities would very much like to chat with.
Wedding, for reference, once represented Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics before reportedly deciding snow wasn’t just for slalom — it was for shipping worldwide by the tonne. According to investigators, his operation allegedly moved 60 metric tons of cocaine a year, generating over $1 billion in revenue. The FBI now lists him among their Ten Most Wanted, dangling a $15 million reward for information. Roughly one gently-used CLK GTR.
And so here we are: one fugitive snowboarder somewhere in the world, one federal agency now in possession of a hypercar that could outrun half their fleet in reverse, and a Mercedes so exotic it practically requires a background check to sit near it.
If you ever doubted the cultural power of the CLK GTR, remember this: it doesn’t just attract collectors. It attracts international crime syndicates.
Images courtesy of FBI