Engine Swapped1992W201
I’m Nate Vincent. I run motorsport at FCP Euro.
We did not buy an Evolution II. We bought a tired 1987 190E and built the car Mercedes would have built if DTM had kept going and the parts bin had stayed open.
The engine is an M133: the 2.0 turbo out of a GLA 45. It never sat north-south from the factory and it never had an H-pattern. We turned it lengthways, put a 716.6 six-speed from an SLK behind it, and sent it to a limited-slip out back. MoTeC runs the show. The first time it went around our own lot I thought: this idea is not stupid.
The skin is replica Evo II aero and a DTM livery. Underneath it is W204 C63 corners, a BMW rack, C63 Brembos, a cage, a Sparco seat. Display wheels are 19-inch Rotiforms. The ones that actually get heat in them are 18s.
It is a tribute. It is also a parts-bin argument: the W201 still takes a modern AMG heart if you are willing to cut. Nine months. A thousand hours. Then Watkins Glen, Lime Rock, Gingerman.
I wanted people to look at a 190 and think they could still go racing in one.
-Nate Vincent, FCP Euro
Late 2021 (The idea) I did not want another Cosworth tribute with the original four. I wanted a 190 that used what Mercedes actually learned after DTM ended. Buy a tired shell. Put a modern AMG four in it the way the 1992 cars used a four: for the front axle, not for nostalgia. Facebook. A 190E. We brought it home.
Late 2021 (The vision) DTM was won in the back room. Mercedes, BMW, Ford engineers sitting up after the shop had gone home, working the edge of the rules and sometimes through them. Engines that lasted a handful of races. Geometry nobody had put on a street shell before. That is the era. Not the wing. The war room. We thought: take that brief, give it a modern heart, and do the late nights here in Milford. Old 1987 190E. M133 out of a GLA 45. Six-speed 716.6. C63 corners and brakes. Help from the ancestors, from the rivals, from the people who still answer the phone after dinner. The hero cars of 1992 would not have been allowed half of this. That was the point.
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