The original first CLOS implementation called PCL (Portable CommonLoops) was written in 100% Common Lisp with very little implementation specific CL code. PCL was a library which ran on at least 15 different Common Lisp implementations.
What really is a myth that it's (only) macros. That CLOS implementation is a complex library written as data types, functions, macros, ... and which was bootstrapped to be partly written in itself using classes, method, generic functions, ...
This is a persistent myth. CLOS is built in to the language.