In 1998, Mercedes bought AMG, which led to the birth of another three-letter tuning house. Hans Werner Aufrecht, the “A” in AMG, set up a different company with the same name to keep doing the motorsport business that Mercedes didn’t want to take over. A lot of these businesses involved building and driving cars for the bigger company. After that, HWA worked on road cars, making limited editions like the Mercedes CLK DTM and planning the Detomaso P72 hypercar that will be made in the future. It is also about to show off its first street car with its name. It is a clever update of the famous 190E 2.5-16 Evo II, which AMG raced and drove to victory in the DTM sedan championship in the early 1990s before the merger. I got to see it before anyone else earlier this week when I went to HWA’s offices in Affalterbach, which are right next door to AMG’s. In the first part, it talked about what the new car is not. HWA CEO Martin Marx told people at Road & Track not to call the company’s new “concept demonstrator” a restomod. “We promise that we took this project as seriously as everything else we do here,” Marx says next. We didn’t fix up an old car; this one is almost brand new. That is a big promise since HWA makes 120 race cars and a huge number of race engines every year. For multiple race wins, the company also has hundreds of trophies all over its Affalterbach building. That’s exactly what people who buy HWA Evo will do. The price has been set at €714,000, which is very precise for Germany. Based on the current exchange rate, that’s a little less than $770,000. Collectors have been interested in the original Evo II for a long time. It was limited to 502 units so that it could match the aerodynamic changes made to the race version. It is now thought to be one of the most desirable modern Mercedes. That was shown at a sale in Las Vegas last year, where a model with very low mileage sold for an amazing $544,000. Is it possible that the new version is almost 50% more unique? While the HWA Evo has a familiar look, a perfect Evo II shows how different the two cars really are. That’s right, the new one is 12 inches bigger and longer than the old one. Its length has grown by 3.1 inches, which lets the front axle move 1.9 inches closer to the front of the car. The HWA Evo’s strong lines aren’t broken up by joints or gaps like the original cars were. That’s because the original car had the same body package over production metal as the standard 190E at the time. What’s going on is that the skin is mostly made of carbon fiber and is brand new. From the outside, the only original iron that can be seen is the C-post behind the back doors and a small strip running down the side of the roof. Below is a real 190E shell, but it wasn’t an Evo. Instead, one of the 1.7 million standard cars was used. Because the front and back frames had to be changed to make room for the new suspension and much better crash protection, only the passenger section was used. The new front end, which is made of aluminum and high-strength steel, looks a lot like the front end of HWA’s AMG GT race car. Gordian Von Schöning, Chief Technology Officer, says that the goal of adding structural support to the original bodywork is to make it stronger and stiffer while giving it the benefits of a roll cage without having to install one. The carbon-fiber panels on the outside that connect to the main shell make it stiffer. Marx’s claim that HWA’s Evo is not a restaurant seems more likely when you look at how many changes have been made. It no longer has the original front struts or the multilink back axle. Instead, each corner now has a double wishbone suspension. The market version of the HWA Evo will have a six-speed manual transaxle in the back to help spread the weight and get the best 50:50 static weight distribution. Also, the clutch has been changed. The back brakes will be 14.1-inch Brembo discs with four-pot calipers, and the front brakes will be 14.9-inch Brembo discs with six-pot calipers. The original car’s 17-inch wheels would not have been able to fit these sizes. The back wheels of a HWA are 20 inches, and the front wheels are 19 inches. Adaptive springs and carbon-ceramic brakes will also be part of the optional Affalterbach Pack. The original 190E had a rotating ball system, but now it has a steering rack that is helped by hydraulics. Things start to feel out of date when it comes to HWA’s engine choices. The 190E Evo II’s 16-valve, 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine, which Cosworth made, could make up to 232 horsepower at 7700 rpm. The current turbocharged engine from HWA needs a lot more power and has to meet environmental rules in some places before the car can be sold as new. The AMG 2.0-liter four from the CLA 45 S has been replaced by the “M276” 3.0-liter twin-turbo V-6 from the E43 AMG, which could be seen as a more modern option. It was a strange move since Mercedes didn’t put their first V-6 engine in a passenger car until 2003, three years after the 190E was taken off the market. Von Schöning thinks that the engine was the best choice because it could be tuned. The guy says the V-6 is short enough to have a front-mid layout forward of the axle. “And we had performance goals that meant we couldn’t use another four-cylinder.” The center of gravity is higher because it has a low body and is tilted 60 degrees. We thought about using a V-8, but that would have made the front end carry a lot of weight. We could have had the same power with more weight. The V-6’s main selling point was that it could take more power. HWA buys new engines from AMG and disassembles them so that each part can be fixed separately. A dry sump, a new induction system, and HWA’s own ECU improve the power. The pistons and rods remain the same. The company says it has 443 horsepower in its base form and 493 horsepower with the Affalterbach pack. According to Von Schöning, “To be honest, those are very low numbers.” The buyer chooses the end drive, so the top speed is up to them. It can be 168 mph with faster acceleration or 186 mph with longer gearing. Thanks to its better ECU, the new car will also be able to do traction and stability control. The new bodywork was designed by Edgar Chu, an Australian who now lives in Germany and has worked for Mercedes and Nissan. He is also in charge of creating a number of HWA race cars. Even though it was hard, he was able to keep the uniqueness of the original Evo II without making the car look silly, even though it was a lot bigger. It was important to have vents under the wheel arches of the new Evo. This new aerodynamic package will produce about 170 pounds of downforce to improve stability and meet the cooling and aerodynamic needs of a much more powerful car. Some parts, like the new clear-lens LED headlights, the black radiator grille on display, and the lack of a three-pointed hood emblem, will be argued over more. I must say that I have a bias because I own a 190E 2.5-16—I think the front end of the original Evo II is almost perfect. Marx agrees that HWA made a risky choice when it started its first own-brand project because a lot of money had to be spent without knowing how the market would respond. But it seems to have been a success already—75 % of the 100 cars that were supposed to be made were sold before the first one was delivered in 2026. This kind of work will keep going, and the next one might be a more up-to-date version of the famous AMG “Hammer” that is based on the W124 E-Class.
