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I don’t really feature a lot of Mercedes-Benz race cars not because I don’t like them, but rather there just aren’t a whole lot of them out there. Very rarely do I see these kind of cars come up for sale as opposed to say a BMW E36. There really isn’t a ”go-to” Mercedes chassis for building a race car like the E36 and even cars that do tend to respond well to being stripped out, the aftermarket support is either lacking or very expensive. Although one Mercedes from the past 25 years does seem to be the favorite of the track rats alike, the W201.
This 1986 190E up for bid in Florida doesn’t have much left of its original engine and interior left of it, if any. The car has been totally stripped of basically everything including the original M103 inline-6 engine that was replaced with the next generation M104 3.2 inline-6. A 5-speed gearbox was bolted up to this car and nearly every single piece of the interior was removed to be replaced by the bare essentials. A single seat, a tachometer and some switches are all that remain inside this W201 that cut the weight to around 2,000 pounds. This doesn’t sound like a half bad combination now.
For all the air-cooled Porsches that we feature, there is still one outlier that is the ne plus ultra when it comes to P-cars for me. The 968 Club Sport. This was another one of those forbidden fruits to US customers, but a formula which enthusiasts copied in earnest by either cobbling together a few of the more performance oriented options available at the time, such as the M030 option package, or by way of the aftermarket. Out of the box, the Club Sport was ready to hit the track, with about 222 pounds shed from the curb weight by way of deletion of luxury trimmings and complimented with a more aggressive suspension setup. This Club Sport for sale in Maryland has been worked over a bit to make it even more fearsome for track days.
Homologation for motorsport is nothing new, but it’s uncommon that a vehicle will make the transition into multiple race series. Mercedes-Benz had intentions of rally competition with the 190E when it was introduced in the early 1980s, but, as they say, life is timing. With the Audi Quattro lighting up the World Rally scene, Mercedes became a bit gun shy of the proposition. Instead, they decided to go racing in the newly devised Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft (German Touring Car) race series. The first years of this series were legendary, with Mercedes going head to head with E30 BMW M3s on the track in some epic battles.
The two competition 190Es we’ll take a look at today were intended for two very different race series. The first 190E we’ll take a look at is for sale in Holland and was intended for the rally circuit.
Here’s an easy recipe for fun: take a small light-weight rear-wheel-drive car, strip out the interior, toss on some wider and stickier tires, and go…
It’s been a while since we’ve featured a race prepared car here on GCFSB, and what better way to motivate us to do so than…
