PHOTOGRAPHY MARK RICCIONI
Danish driver Kurt Thiim (above) was a titan of DTM in the early 1990s
It had a clumsy name. It wasn’t that fast. It wasn’t even great to drive. It didn’t have a particularly long or illustrious motorsport career. And yet the Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.5-16 Evo II is an icon. A big wing and mad wheelarch extensions will get you most places, right?
Unlike the BMW M3, which arrived in 1987 and quickly set about dominating whatever championships it competed in, the story of the Mercedes 190E’s motorsport career was decidedly mixed. Originally the 190E was intended to go rallying, so Mercedes commissioned Cosworth to turn its 2.0-litre M102 engine into something more exotic. The resulting 2.3-16 model featured twin overhead cams and power climbed from 107bhp to 185. But this was 1983. The Audi Quattro was busy blowing the opposition into the weeds on rally stages around the globe, a rear drive 190E wasn’t going to cut it. Merc didn’t even bother going there.
Instead the 190E 2.3-16 became a road car, went to Nardò and set various distance records (including completing 50,000km in 201hrs 39mins at an average of 154.07mph), but had its moment in the spotlight at the 1984 Nürburgring Race of Champions when Merc managed to slot a load of F1 drivers into them for a one-off race, only for them all to be trounced by a young upstart by the name of Ayrton Senna.
Appetite whetted, Merc decided the 190E, having met Group A regs by selling over 5,000 examples, would be fit for racing. This was 1987. Remember the M3? It was busy sweeping all before it in the DTM German touring car series, including the 190E. But this time Mercedes didn’t duck the challenge. It developed the 190E, the engine grew to 2.5 litres and the bodywork sprouted splitters, skirts and wings. Five hundred and two of these Evo I specials were built to satisfy homologation in 1989, but again it wasn’t enough to usurp a dominant BMW.