The best part? It’s road legal.

In spending hours scouring the interwebs, we’ve seen plenty of car replicas – whether in the U.S. or any other parts of the world. While some are as good as the official Batmobile replica that was once for sale, some were typically horrendous, such as the Pontiac GTO that desperately tries to be an Aventador.

This Sauber-Mercedes C9 replica from Kempton Park, South Africa belongs to the former, and it was built by a skilled mechanic named Johan Ackermann.

The Sauber-Mercedes C9 replica project started in 2011, with Ackermann designing the whole car himself including the chassis. It’s a solid copy of the real thing and we would have been fooled to think that this is indeed the exact race car that conquered the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

For the uninitiated, the Sauber-Mercedes C9 served as a beacon of the automaker’s return to motorsport. It served as the engine supplier for the Sauber team in the 1985 World Sportscar Championship, with the C9’s predecessor, the Sauber C8, as its first child. The Sauber-Mercedes C9, however, made history in 1989 by winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It also dominated five races in the World Sportscar Championship in 1988.

With that said, driving a Sauber-Mercedes C9, albeit, a replica, would be a drool-worthy sight for motorsport fans. That’s the main reason why the new owner of the replica bought the car.

Powering Ackermann’s Sauber-Mercedes C9 is twin-turbo 3.2-liter V6 that produces 322 horsepower (240 kiloWatts) and weighs only 2,204 pounds (1,000 kilograms). It has a top speed of 186 miles per hour (300 kilometers per hour).

The best part is, this supposedly track-only race car is actually road legal. Well, at least in South Africa.

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