Mercedes-Benz Isn't Capable Of This Level Of Audacity Anymore

There was something in the water supply in Germany in the late 1980s that made the normally quite staid and boring luxury automaker brands go haywire and start producing the most audacious and ludicrous race cars for the street. It was a chemical compound called DTM, and it's seriously unfortunate that a company like Mercedes-Benz is no longer under the influence of said chemical. Is there any racing series on the planet today that could make Mercedes-Benz produce a street-legal homologation race car powered by a Cosworth-developed 7,600 RPM four-cylinder? The days of the 190E 2.5-16 Evolution II are long over, but this reminder of a cooler time could be yours if you're the high bidder at RM Sotheby's Monaco sale in a couple of weeks. 

This car exists as testament to the ability of Mercedes-Benz engineers to have fun, but they so rarely get the opportunity. This is a company known today primarily for building hundreds of thousands of boring silver crossovers mostly driven by boring people. There have been a few rare exceptions to prove the rule over the last 36 years since this car was built, but by and large Mercedes-Benz has an exceedingly mid history of corporate middle manager cars and big luxury. 

In spite of the big wing and copious aero add-ons, this thing isn't about big power and blunt force, as it produced just 232 horsepower. It's a delicate scalpel of speed, built for the Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft series to take on the likes of BMW's M3 and Opel's Omega 3000. This impressive Mercedes was the street-legal version of the car that would go on to win the 1991 and 1992 DTM Constructors' titles. Just 502 road examples of the Evolution II were built, all to identical specification in Blue Black Metallic finish, but that was all that Mercedes needed for legal entry into the series. They just don't do them like this anymore, and that's a shame. 

While 232 horsepower isn't exactly going to set the world on fire with acceleration, especially when installed in a 3,000 pound mid-sized sedan. Make that sedan into a racing car, however, stripped of all its luxuries, and it lost about 700 pounds making it a much more competitive track machine. In order to make the track-only car more competitive, Mercedes had to imbue the street car with a bunch of track-oriented equipment to make it race legal. The three-pointed star took a standard W201 chassis and changed just about everything about it to build the Evo II. The homologation special is wider, stiffer, and lighter than standard with bigger Brembo brakes, bigger wheels, wider arches, stickier tires, a dogleg gearbox, and the obvious aero accouterments. 

Cosworth worked its butt off to get Mercedes' M102 four-cylinder engine into racing shape. In standard form it was a 2.3-liter eight-valve mile eater making just 130 horsepower. Cossie developed a lightweight aluminum cylinder head with four valves per cylinder (for 16 total valves). Earlier racing versions of the engine retained the 2.3-liter displacement, but for 1990 the engine was pumped up to 2.5-liters with a bigger bore and shorter stroke. The larger displacement didn't create any additional power on paper, but it bumped the torque curve and made the car better to drive on the street and even faster on track. It sounds really good. 

This particular example, unit 283 out of 502, was delivered new to Switzerland and stayed there until 2006 where it accumulated just under 80,000 kilometers of use. The car was treated to a full three-year mechanical and cosmetic restoration beginning in 2021, and has barely covered 1,000 kilometers in the last two decades. It currently shows just 80,598 kms. Over the first 16 years of its life the car averaged about 3,100 miles of use per year, but in the most recent twenty years it has averaged just 36 miles per year. A crying shame if you ask me. Whoever buys this car owes it to themselves (and the car) to drive it as much as humanly possible. 

RM Sotheby's has placed a pre-auction estimate for this car between $305,000 and $410,000. If you have a spare third of a million dollars to spend on one of the coolest Mercedes-Benz models in history, you should find yourself in Monaco on Saturday, April 25 so you can put up your bidder's paddle.