The 1983 car that gave birth to modern Mercedes

It was 40 years ago that Mercedes reinvented itself. Until 1983, Mercedes had been built around, essentially, a three-car model range: the E-Class, the S-Class and the SL. Okay, so there was the G-Wagen 4x4, but this was at that time a thinly disguised military vehicle and very much shoved off into the “specialist interest” corner of the showroom.

That changed in 1983. Well, it technically changed in 1982, when the new 190 model was first shown at the Paris motor show, but the new compact Mercedes-Benz wouldn’t go on sale until 1983, by which time it had gained an E suffix – for Einspritzung, or “injection”, thanks to Bosch electronics and pumps replacing carburettors – to become the 190E.

It sounds daft now, but this addition of a fourth (or fifth – G-Wagen, remember) model line was a dramatic move for Mercedes, which didn’t do things by halves. The 190E was a high-stakes bet, with Mercedes spending the equivalent of €2 billion in today’s money on the car. Prof Hans Scherenberg, Merc’s head of development at the time, said: “This must be a typical Mercedes-Benz. So we can’t compromise too much in terms of driving culture, safety and the corresponding Mercedes-Benz characteristics.”

If the 190E’s “affordable Merc” concept would turn out to have only a four-decade lifespan, then it was also in large part responsible for a much bigger change in Mercedes’ model line-up thinking – the sports saloon

Thankfully for the Swabians, the 190E was a roaring success: 1.8 million of them would be produced over a 10-year life, and it not only led directly to the C-Class family (the original C-Class would even carry over the 190E’s sophisticated five-link rear suspension – talk about being future-proofed) but Merc’s first toe in the water of a broader, more affordable model line-up would lead to a dramatic expansion. By the turn of the century, Mercedes didn’t make four or five different models, it made more than 20. That’s a process that is only today starting to be reversed, as Mercedes starts to cull its smaller, more compact cars in favour of higher-end, more luxurious (read: profitable) models.

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If the 190E’s “affordable Merc” concept would turn out to have only a four-decade lifespan, then it was also in large part responsible for a much bigger change in Mercedes’ model line-up thinking – the sports saloon.

The 190E wasn’t the first Merc to be quick. Mercedes had been building fast road cars going back to the early days of the century, when you could have technically bought one of its Grand Prix cars, put plates and lights on it and driven home. The 1955 “Gullwing” 300 SL was, almost inarguably, the first modern supercar (sorry, Lamborghini Miura), and the 300 SEL 6.3 of 1968 packed the punch of a 250hp (lots, then) 6.3-litre V8 engine under its relatively staid bodywork.

The 190E was going to be different, though. So sophisticated was its suspension, and so stiff its bodywork, that Mercedes thought: “Let’s go rallying.” The world rally championship was big news at the time, a place where you truly could win on Sunday and sell on Monday. So a plan was hatched that Mercedes would get the legendary racing engine firm Cosworth (firmly, but far from exclusively, associated with Ford) to make a 16-valve head for Merc’s sturdy 2.3-litre, four-cylinder petrol engine. With Cosworth power and a neat, rear-drive balance, surely the 190E could take on the likes of the Ford Escort RS1800 and the Opel Ascona 400?

It could – but it couldn’t compete with the turbocharged, four-wheel drive Audi Quattro, and when that car pulled the rug out from under the entire rally world in 1983, Merc went back to the drawing board. It also went back to the racetrack – for the first time since the awful Le Mans disaster of 1955 – and instead of snarling through forests, the 190E Cosworth would instead dominate the racetracks, taking on and beating Merc’s biggest rivals from BMW and Audi in the German Touring Car Championship (DTM).

In doing so, the 190E would also become Mercedes’ first homologation special. Just as BMW saw the logic, and the financial reward, of making a customer-friendly version of its M3 racing car, so too Mercedes would sell you a road-going 190E with that wonderful Cosworth engine. Actually, the Cosworth name appears nowhere, officially, on the 190E or in its literature. In fact, technically, the sporty 190E is known as the 190E 2.3-16, and later 2.5-16 when the engine got an extra 200cc to bring its power output up over 200hp (briefly, until catalytic converters pegged it back to 194hp).

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By the time this gorgeous 190E 2.5-16 was built in 1989, Mercedes was winning all round itself, with no little help from independent tuning and racing firm AMG Motorenbau und Entwicklungsgesellschaft – or AMG for short. Far more so than affordable saloons, AMG would come to underpin Mercedes’ future. That early racing liaison would turn into a full-blown marriage, and now there’s hardly a Mercedes model sold that doesn’t have an AMG badge or accessory fitted, and it’s AMG that has been responsible for the all-conquering (at least until recently) Merc F1 team.

In 1989 this particular car was sold in the UK by specialist performance car dealer Dick Lovett in Bristol. It’s finished in a rare colour, Almandine Red, which was only available from 1989 to 1991, and it’s a second-generation 190E 2.5-16, before the Evo version with its wings and splitters bodykit showed up.

Today, Wayne McCarthy from Cork-based Edgewood Automotive is handing me the key. McCarthy, Ireland’s only dealer for Morgan sports cars, is also a classic and performance car specialist and he’s not only selling this 190E, he was even invited by Mercedes to display it at the UK’s National Classic Car Show last November, as an exceptional example of the species.

“My father had one of the very first 190s in the country” says McCarthy. “It was that pea green that Mercedes used to do, a horrific colour. Ireland actually got the 190 before the UK did, and my father and I drove it across in early 1983. We parked it in Reading and people thought it was alien. ‘How could this be a Mercedes?’ That kind of thing. It was actually a pre-injection, carburettor. Not fast.”

Glancing across at the ruby red 2.5-16 parked outside, McCarthy wistfully, and half to himself, asks: “Why don’t the manufacturers do these homologation specials now?”

Why indeed? The 190E looks perfect and is perfect. It has barely 32,000 miles – verified miles – on the odometer set into its distinctive yellow-hued speedometer. Everything inside is present and correct, from the black-and-white cloth chequer pattern of the seats, set between thick leather side bolsters, to the orangey Zebrano wood trim.

Oh, and the dog-leg five-speed gearbox. Like the contemporary BMW M3, you have to stop and think about selecting first in this car. You need to – lifting the lever slightly over a detente – move it back and to the left. This leaves second and third in their own fore-aft, one-movement shift pattern, which is better for racing.

If that gives you notice of this Mercedes’ sporting intent, little else does. The fuel-injected four-cylinder fires easily and ticks over smoothly. Aside from the gearbox – which gives you the occasional skipped heartbeat in traffic – this Cosworth-engined racetrack monster slips and glides easily through midmorning traffic in Cork city, soundtracked by the faint mechanical whirr of the engine’s valve gear, a familiar sound to anyone who has driven a 1980s Mercedes.

To dig deeper into the 190E 2.5-16′s character, you need two things: an open road, and more than 4,000rpm on the tachometer, at which point this old Mercedes suddenly drops the bifocals and shrugs off the comfy cardigan

It almost seems too easy, not special enough. Whereas the rival BMW M3 practically stuns you with the sharpness of its steering, the 190E 2.5-16 has a more languid style, and instead of a sporty three-spoke steering wheel, there’s the same large pillow-fronted wheel you would have found in any Stuttgart taxi of the time. Heck, there are even heated seats, and yes, they still work in this one.

To dig deeper into the 190E 2.5-16′s character, you need two things: an open road, and more than 4,000rpm on the tachometer. Then things change and they change utterly. So far you’ve just been bumbling along, enjoying the comfort of those bucket seats and the glorious view out through windows with slim pillars and doors, whose sills come down almost to your hips (or so it feels after the claustrophobic confines of a high-waisted modern car).

Then, you find a quiet stretch, drop to second, and pin the throttle. Don’t worry – in a car that’s more than 30 years old, you’re not going to be going fast enough to be a menace to anyone, but at 4,000rpm this old Mercedes suddenly drops the bifocals and shrugs off the comfy cardigan. It seems to drop 100kg of weight in an instant, while the engine suddenly leaves the tappeting noise behind and reveals, and revels in, a hard-edged snarl that dares you – double-dares you – to go looking for the 7,000rpm redline. The whole car feels sharper, harder-edged, more agile, and even by modern standards pretty quick. True, you would go faster in a mere Ford Fiesta ST these days, but you wouldn’t have quite so much entertainment doing it, not once you’ve sampled the 190E’s near-perfect rear-wheel drive balance.

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And then it’s gone. Traffic up ahead means you slow down, dropping back below 3,999rpm and the 190E becomes a normal Mercedes again, swishing you along in with comfort and deportment, but without hurry or drama. The cardigan’s back on and the bifocals are being polished. It’s almost as if the growling, glowering version you just experienced was a mirage, or a half-remembered dream.

A dream that won’t quite go away. Modern high-performance Mercedes models – all badged AMG, of course – have towering speed and sure-footed handling, but they don’t have the character or the sense of involvement of this old 190E. Modern-day Mercedes was born with the 190E in 1983, as the company began its transformation from a stolid maker of sensible luxury cars to the corporate behemoth it is today. It could still learn a few tricks from this old dog, though. Hopefully, amid the move to ever-more-expensive Mercedes models, there might just be room for something that provides simple, unadulterated thrills like this.

You don’t need silly horsepower outputs and wheels the size of dustbin lids to make a great performance car. You just need poise, you just need enough – but no more – power, and you just need a dog-leg gearbox and 4,000rpm on the clock.