Exclusive: Ultimate Mercedes Restomod! £700k HWA EVO

This is a rather special reinterpretation of the Mercedes 190E 2.5-16 Evo II.

Built by HWA – who are Mercedes AMG’s behind-the-scenes secret weapon in the world of motorsport – it’s not a lightly tickled-over plaything. Instead, it’s a proper ground-up restoration that even involves HWA building new front and rear subframes for it. Out too, goes the original four-cylinder engine, replaced by a 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 putting out somewhere between 450 and 500bhp. So twice as much as the original then! The bodywork is wilder too, the chassis is completely upgraded, and if you’ve got a spare £700k you might just be able to get one of the 100 being built.

Meantime, if you’re lucky to be young enough not to remember the original ‘Evo II’ in its prime, it first appeared at the Geneva Motor Show in 1990, as a homologation model for Merc’s DTM (aka German Touring Car Championship) efforts. Just 502 road cars were built, while the race car of the same name won the DTM drivers’ and teams’ titles in 1992. Motorsport pedigree? Tick!

Over to Top Gear’s Head of Car Testing, Ollie Marriage, for the full story…

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[TopGear]

Which car would you like to see HWA restore/build/reinterpret next?

[t_prey]

A real pity that the HWA engineer has been interrupted and cut short on every second sentence. Let the man finish his explanations, please.

[moinpatel]

Try not to interrupt mid-sentence
Ollie: Impossible

[NewEdgeDesigns]

I can’t believe you would ask questions then cut the man off before he finishes his answer.. Beautiful car but this was tough to watch due to the blatant disrespect of this engineer..

[connorbaji]

He was literally just about to explain what they had done and then gets interrupted every 2 seconds!! Very frustrating start to the interview

[JayAlba]

"It's me!!! The interrupter"

[vyrnmn]

Henry Catchpole would have done this interview justice. The video would have been twice as long, but that's the point. We want as much detail as possible.

Hopefully Henry has an audience with this car sooner rather than later, so we can learn more.

[freds]

the interviewer needs to let the guy talk, , , cringing for everytime he talks over the poor guy or cuts him off while he is talking

[dustinthewind]

German man is a real engineer saying "The engine block is three and a half cylinder long." Appreciate that one 👍

[abderrahmanelbakkali]

Ollie interrupting the man is so annoying, he barely let him finish a sentence, that was a crappy behaviour, we want to hear the man talk not just Olly disrespectfully stopping him in the middle of every sentence.

[moinpatel]

Ollie kept interrupting every sentence
Ollie really wanted to be somewhere else, trying to rush the interview
Very disrespectful

[SatanDotExe]

3:43 not only does he interrupt, but he doesn't even know what he's going to say before he opens his mouth.

[gountzas]

Can’t believe top gear got that dork to interrupt the engineer every second sentense

[TechGuru]

"it's not a restomod, it's something else altogether"
*Proceeds to put 'restomod' in the title*
Nice one ollie😂

[Zuxeh]

For future content, please allow the person we want to hear from, speak.

[conor]

It’s so funny that top gear will never respond to anyone because then they’d have to acknowledge the criticism which of course they will never do.

[TheStorkSR]

Can't help but love what HWA has chosen to do. Bruno Sacco looks with modern tech is outside of my price range, but the 190E 2.5 Evo absolutely deserves the same amount of love that Kimera is giving the 037 and Alfaholics are giving the GTA

[jimmy-valerio]

Let the man finish a sentence. Jesus Christ.

[justinmickelson]

This is too awesome, building myself at this moment a w124 track car with a v6 m272 NA engine and standard location 6 speed manual transmission. Working on Engine placement so I fit the modern steering rack / deleting the rack box, then onto the cage!!! This video gives me so much motivation to finish it before this summer 2025 Thank you! Cheers

[Sokolovskiest]

Unwatchable, why do an interview if you don’t want to listen to the person you interviewing. I never post comments. But this is ridiculous!