Picture this; It's Sunday afternoon, and you are cruising in your 2-week old recently released sports car on the Autobahn. It's blue, makes 271 hp (275 ps) easy, and pisses off the neighbors – but who cares? You only live once. You see a familiar face rolling up on your rearview mirror; it's an 80s 190E, nothing to fuss over. But it pulls in closer, and the front aero looks overly done. Could it be? Well, before the word 'EVO' drops out of your mouth, the box-shaped jet-winged legend whizzes by – and puff! It disappears before you can drop a gear.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is not the 90s rally king from the land of ramen and sushi, but a German-engineered classic race car that brought havoc to the German Touring Car Championship popularly known as DTM (Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft).
TopSpeedGermany on YouTube recently took out a similar version of the legend, a built 1991 Mercedes-Benz 190 EVO I, to the Autobahn.
If history serves us right, the road-going Mercedes-Benz 190 EVO I by Cosworth only made 183 hp (185 ps), while the race variant made 320 hp (324 ps). The featured car allegedly make 414 hp (420 ps), an impressive 94 hp (95 ps) bump over the original racer.
The Mercedes-Benz Evo I has quite a fascinating history. It was initially developed to be a rally car, but after Audi unleashed their turbo-charged all-wheel drive Quattro, Mercedes-Benz did the wise thing and searched for another race series – DTM.
Cosworth gave the 190 EVO dual overhead camshafts with four valves per cylinder (16 valves).Thanks to homologation rules, it needed to be based on a road-going model birthing phenomenal cars just like the one in the video below.
The featured car is a 1991 Mercedes-Benz Evo I by Stren Garage. We know it makes 414 hp (420 ps), and based on the information on the builder's website, it is an M111 230 Compressor conversion, a.k.a Honeybadger conversion.
All you need to do is drop your classic Mercedes-Benz 190E, € 25,000 ($26,771), and wait between 12 and 16 weeks to get a simillar built unit from Stern Garage.
The mods list is quite extensive and includes a partially built M111 engine, bigger brakes, handcrafted stainless steel exhaust, optional transmission conversion, fuel line conversion to DASH, intercooler, water cooler, custom fuel rail (EVO), thrust air box among others.
Some of the notable features of the interior include Recaro seats, roll-caged interior, gutted-out back seats, and a 320 kph (186 mph) and 10,000 RPM gauge.
On the video, it takes quite a short time to pull from 60 kph (37 mph) to 120 kph (75 mph). With the foot on the pedal, the classic punisher clocks down the speedometer to 300 kph (186 mph) without struggling.
He does a couple of pulls down the road, and the engine noise and gear shifts are flattering to the ear. Care to see a 30-year-old German classic car hits 186 mph (300 kph) on the Autobahn? We recommend catching that action in the video below.
Humphrey is a car enthusiast whose love and passion for automobiles extended into collecting, writing, driving, and working on cars. He got his passion for cars from his Dad, who spent thousands of hours working on his old junky 1970 E20 Toyota Corolla. Years later, he would end up doing the same with a series of lemons he’s owned throughout his adult life. Full profile
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