For me, civilization peaked around 1989. It wasn’t the pent-up creative energy behind the teetering Berlin Wall or even the release of The Cure’s “Disintegration” that set a high-water mark. Back then, for my money, touring car racing reached its zenith.
This is not a novel opinion. During a run from the late Eighties through about 1993, Mercedes, Ford, BMW, Audi, Alfa, and even Volvo locked horns, bashing doors and fenders across the world’s grand temples of motorsports. Of note, BMW and Mercedes snatched at title after title with their defining compact sedans of the era – the M3 and 190E.
To understand why the racing was so captivating, words are useless. You must bear witness to the glory. Consider the greatest smash-cut compendium of racing footage known to man.
Sure you see the Volvos and Audis sending apex cones pinwheeling into space, their chassis cocked sideways on a pair of sidewalls past every apex, but the series’ real stars shine brightest in the footage: the two-door flared-hip Bimmer and its four-door nemesis, the mobster with a three-pronged star stuck on the nose.
The 190E is an itch I’ve yet to scratch. My childhood friend and college roommate owned a taxi-spec 190E at age 14. The car was well-traveled but pristine. A time capsule. Later, he upgraded to a Cosworth 16-valve w201 in smoke silver, which I drove on the snowy streets of Eastern Washington.
I still remember the way the driver’s door shut with a steely ka-thunk, how those hefty controls—the steering, the pedals, the HVAC sliders—conveyed an overriding quality. By comparison, my own E30 M3 felt friskier and flintier, a charismatic but simple chariot by comparison. And yet, despite my fascination for the racing of the era, I’ve never owned a w201.
I came close once, until R&T contributor and 190E Cossie owner Mike Duff turned me away. Engines for the 190E 16-valve cars (the E30 M3’s real roadgoing competitor) are idiosyncratic, operating with a novel mechanical fuel injection system and a host of parts that are nearly impossible to source in 2023.
But what if you weren’t beholden to parts scarcity? What if you were the parts company? How would you approach the 190E platform in 2023?
A company called FCP Euro built a car to answer the question.
Here it sits in the paddock at Lime Rock Park, a vision of touring car glory draped in a kaleidoscope of purple, green, white, and gold. From thirty feet, this 190E looks like it must’ve raced in-period. As it exits its trailer, your mind goes straight to that slow-motion footage, to the grainy eighties video, to apex cones pinwheeling past Saturn.
Then you move closer.
Everywhere you look, in the places you’d expect to see period-correct sponsorship logos, there’s an FCP Euro decal in their place. That’s because the car was built to divert your attention (and most certainly your hard-earned dineros) to FCP Euro, a parts supplier for just about any replacement item your Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mini, Porsche, Volkswagen, Volvo—and yes indeed your Mercedes-Benz—requires.
The company has long been popular in vintage BMW circles, mostly for its bonkers warranty program that allows essentially any broken part to be returned. But with this 190E, FCP Euro saw an opportunity to increase brand awareness outside of its sea of loyal BMW diehards.
“Builds are an authentic way to excite people and keep it about the parts,” says Nate Vincent, one of the masterminds behind the build. Vincent is a self-proclaimed touring car maniac who oversaw the ideation and construction of the project.
He’s worshipped at that touring car altar for a lifetime, even racing in the modern TCR Series. By virtue of his expertise behind the wheel and with a wrench in his hand, the good people at FCP Euro told me Vincent has a penchant for setting up cars exactly like this 190E.
So let's be clear: the car is a pure marketing exercise. FCP Euro stickers practically coat the car like a layer of paint. But in another way, this build is an homage with real soul, driven entirely by enthusiasm for the subject matter by people who genuinely live and breathe for these cars.
The build is also a suggestion to FCP Euro's many customers who, like myself, have a project or two lagging in the garage. "Order the parts and get 'er done," this 190 suggests. "You can do it."
“Building the car in-house… it’s a hard story to tell sometimes, but it’s a theme our customers identify with,” Vincent says. “We have more budget and more resources than most, but let’s keep [the project at a level] that anyone could do.”
That aim meant molding the build from common clay, laying out a build sheet that's aspirational but accessible. While the racy, Cosworth-tuned 190Es are certified collectors’ items, run-of-the-mill w201s are not. The base car for this project cost just $2000, sourced from an internet ad in California. According to FCP Euro staff, it was a cherry little car, with a blue leather interior so nice it couldn’t be thrown away; instead it was gifted to an FCP Euro customer.
From that blank slate, a decision was made to ditch the car’s faithful 2.6-liter Mercedes inline-six. Instead of sourcing the period- and chassis-correct 16-valve inline-four for the car, the FCP Euro crew went for that engine’s modern descendant, the turbocharged 2.0-liter M133 inline-four.
You’ll find the M133 in many modern Mercedes-AMG products. (This specific one came from a GLA45 AMG.) According to Vincent, modern junkyards are littered with the things. Despite being turbocharged, the M133 is lighter than a w201’s 16-valve mill, Vincent says. From the factory, the M133 makes the same horsepower and torque as a 190E touring car did in-period. And with a simple tune, this engine with its forged internals and stout build can make much more. The updated engine also offered an opportunity to leverage progress in engine technologies, like direct injection, and to control its many parameters with a modern ECU. No MFI here.
So FCP Euro and its team of techs set to work dropping this thoroughly modern turbo mill into the 190E’s engine bay, freeing the M133 from the complications of AWD and a slushbox transmission’s dragging presence. From a glance at the finished product, you’d never know there was any struggle. The whole engine bay looks resolved, all race-car tidiness, save a few strategically placed zip ties and a slice of cardboard strapped to the radiator that keeps engine temps up. But that fresh-from-the-shop finishing hides a mountain of fettling.
At one point, the FCP Euro team raided its parts department and lined up twenty different ball joints, side by side, tearing each one brand-new from the packaging, swapping them in and out until the right fit was found. The car’s steering rack is borrowed from an E46 BMW 3-series—a familiar and proven quantity—and the brakes were pulled off a modern C63 AMG. The transmission is an SLK's six-speed, which Vincent says will mate to nearly any Mercedes engine, past or present. (This should get your imagination bubbling.)
With the base components sourced and fitted, finishing touches were applied. The team aimed to turn the humble road car into a track-day weapon, while maintaining a period-correct vibe. From Europe, the team sourced an Evo body kit sprung from a mold taken off an original Evo and fitted it to the car. Finished, the look is as accurate as possible, save the giant, gorgeous carbon chin spoiler hanging off the end of the car’s snout.
Rotiform provided the wheels in a bespoke gold color, then FCP fitted the graphics. It’s an iconic design borrowed from that golden era.
Race-car flourishes abound. A Tilton pedal box sits upright and ready in the 190’s footwell. There’s a three-spoke Sparco wheel, covered in a grippy fabric, its rim jutting toward the driver with just the perfect amount of dish. The entire dashboard made way for a piece of crinkle-finish material that frames a single STACK tachometer, just like the one you would’ve seen on any DTM car from the period.
It's one of those loving touches of homage that only a real touring-car dork would think to include. A good sign.
That central STACK tach doesn’t work at the moment, but in its place, a series of shift lights sit atop the panel of buttons used to start the car, paired to a display that monitors its vitals – revs, temperatures, pressures, and the like.
There’s no key to hand over here. (This is a race car, duh.) Instead, I throw on a helmet and hump over the roll cage’s door bars, then slump into the deep bucket seat where a five-point harness awaits. I press a series of button presses on the Cartek panel—ECU, IGNITION, FUEL PUMP 1, FUEL PUMP 2—and we’re ready to roll. Finally, I poke the “START” button.
In a moment, the M133 fires. The exhaust note is quieter than you expect at idle; I left the ear plugs at home. Instead, the 190E’s cabin fills with a buzzy, mechanical, and metallic thrum as the engine sets into its slowly pulsating idle. I’m warned the clutch uptake can be tricky—your typical light-switch race clutch—but a smooth and quick actuation of the pedal gets the car rolling easily.
Just like that, after months and months of building, and some eleventh-hour heroics by the FCP team to set the car up for Lime Rock Park, I’m sat in some hazy version of my touring-car fantasies. Only it’s hard to imagine an old touring car being any faster than this one.
This M133 is a bomb of torque tasked with motivating the 190E’s scant 2600 lbs. At maybe 1800 or 2000 rpm, the M133's turbo shovels a mountain of grunt through the rear wheels. At maybe 3000 rpm, that torque hits in this big velvet hammer blow that’ll sends a pair of rubber streaks trailing behind the car.
I spend most of the first shakedown laps figuring out when that power hits and how to tame wrangle it into shape. According to Vincent, the car is capable of putting down more than 400 hp at the wheels. Thankfully, there’s a small knob on the side of the control panel that controls throttle position mapping. Crank it clockwise to allow full power from the engine; crank it the other way to dial it back. We settle on something like 60 percent throttle for the first few laps.
It's plenty.
There’s nothing to save you here when you get too deep into the throttle and the car goes loose. No traction control, no ABS, not even boosted brakes or power steering.
Into Lime Rock’s arcing first turn, backing the car down from the long straight that precedes, you have to shove every ounce of leg you’ve got at the brake pedal. Initially, I’m worried the wheels might lock up if I ask too much, so I approach the turn again and again with abundant caution. After a few sessions, it’s clear that I wasn’t asking nearly enough of the brakes up front – maybe only 60 or 70 percent of their total power.
Another particular joy: the way this chassis was set up by FCP. Into Lime Rock’s lone left hander you’re balancing weight on the front of the car to get the nose set for that all-important right-hander onto no-name straight that follows.
The front and rear of the car are locked in absolute harmony into that first left-hander. A little lift off the throttle doesn’t rotate the car (which can unsettle some drivers) if you got too bold with entry speed. Rather, the sedan's lengthy wheelbase and the absolute balance of this w201's setup means a little lift or a brush at the brakes just politely noses the car back in toward the apex.
If you can avoid being too greedy, that left sets you up perfectly for the track’s lone right-hander, an off-camber bend that falls gently into a chunk of rutted curbing. Here you chase exit speed to maximize every inch of that back straight. It’s an absolutely critical corner for a good lap at Lime Rock, and perhaps the most fun place to let the car stretch its legs.
When you get it just right, early throttle application breaks the 190E into this greasy little balletic slide as the track yaws away, sending the outside tires clattering over the cracked slivers of curbing, rocketing on to the back straight. You dial in just a smidge of steering angle to correct the slide, foot buried in the throttle pedal.
If there’s any better feeling you can have driving a car, let me know.
During FCP’s final shakedown of the car, just one week before I drove it, Vincent discovered the car needed a bit more compliance to cope with the curbing at Lime Rock. So FCP raised the suspension slightly. The car also rides on aggressive street tires, rather than slicks.
That rubber compound and the extra travel and compliance from the chassis allows the 190 to ease up to that happy buzzy floating moment when both outside tires are at their limit and the car is screaming JUST LIKE THAT through every conceivable means – the steering, pedals, and seat of your pants.
During my last stint in the car, I come to grips with the car, finding where my limited talent meets its vast capability. The gearbox is a joy to work, with maybe two inches separating the shifter’s positions between first and second gear, but I found that skipping downshifts into second and staying in third into Lime Rock's slowest corners frees up the mental energy to nail my braking points and corner entries.
A little whiff of turbo lag down low means that you stomp the throttle super early, well before you unwind steering toward corner exit. By the time you’ve got the front wheels straightened out, your eyes looking way through the entry to the next corner, the engine’s right in the meat of its powerband. That conservative shifting approach proved especially useful when diving through Lime Rock’s uphill chicane, when the throttle is pinned over a few sets of curbs. I’m not sure if that approach produced my fastest laps, but it certainly produced the smoothest and most enjoyable ones.
Everywhere else, the 190E seemed to revel in rough, physical, aggressive motions.
The car’s steering rack feels slower and less immediate than the rest of the car. While the sadomasochist in me yearns for the full Hercules treatment a hyper-quick rack could offer, what’s bolted to the car currently it a good fit for Lime Rock’s layout.
During my last stint in the car, once the track temps rose from toasty to blistering in the late afternoon, my confidence in the car grew and heat got into the tires. I finally started locking the car up while braking into the chicane. And still, I never quite stomped in enough braking force up front to maximize the car’s barking power in each corner.
Nor did I feel the need to crank up the car’s power fully. There were a few tuning issues to iron out yet, and even dialed down at sixty percent, the 190E is still mega-fast.
Under Vincent’s more capable hands, and on Lime Rock’s quicker track layout, this 190E turns sub-minute lap times on street tires. That’s impressive stuff, putting the aged sedan on par with serious track toys like Porsche’s GT3 RS and GT4 RS, which we had out at LRP. It even bettered the BMW M2 and Toyota Supra that also lurked on pit lane.
Guess which one is most fun to drive and the most rewarding to work?
A few days after I got back home from Lime Rock, my wife gasped as I stretched out in front of the bathroom mirror. There was a three-inch bruise, black as coal, running along the bottom of my left tricep. Surrounding the bruise, a sickly yellow pallor. Where the hell did that come from, she asked? I just shrugged.
I don’t remember my arm bumping anything directly, but it couldn’t be from anything else but driving the 190E.
It’s a reminder that the best driving usually occurs on a race track and feels something like a fist fight with a steering wheel thrown in. While this car wasn’t built for any particular race series, it’s certainly more focused as a track weapon than any car you can buy with a license plate. Why spring six figures for a road car that pretends to be a race car when a more-focused build will go just as fast—and in far greater style?
To that end, a drive in FCP Euro’s 190E restomod touring-car something-or-other affirmed a few rather obvious lessons. Mercedes W201s are good, race cars are even better, and if we have to have advertising stuffed into every corner of our lives, it may as well be pasted across the doors of a sedan capable of slaying giants, but mostly aimed at making joy.
Correction July 17, 2023: This piece erroneously listed The Beastie Boys as the band behind 1989’s disintegration by the cure. the beastie boy's seminal 1989 album was paul's boutique.< em
The only member of staff to flip a grain truck on its roof, Kyle Kinard is R&T's senior editor and resident malcontent. He lives near Seattle and enjoys the rain. His column, Kinardi Line, runs when it runs.
