You Can Buy HWA's $760K New 190E Evo II, Or The Real Thing For Less — And That's A Genuinely Hard Choice

The Restomod Was Supposed To Be The Practical Choice. It Isn’t Anymore.

Restomods typically exist to solve a real problem: originals are too rare, too expensive, or too fragile to actually drive the way you’d want. HWA’s new 190E 2.5-16 Evolution II tribute, now in customer deliveries at $760,000, was built on exactly that premise. Except right now, a genuine original is bidding on Bring a Trailer for less money — and that upends the entire calculation.

Only 502 Ever Built Makes This Genuinely Rare

Mercedes-Benz built just 502 examples of the Evolution II, and pristine survivors rarely surface on the open market. This particular car — chassis number 401, originally sold in Japan before being exported to the US roughly a decade ago — last changed hands for $425,000 in 2022. Bidding has already cleared $400,000 again, putting it in genuinely direct competition with HWA’s brand-new interpretation on price alone.

The Engine Is A Genuine Piece Of Motorsport History

Powering the original is a Cosworth-sourced 2.5-liter naturally aspirated four making 232 hp, with a revised throttle body, upgraded camshafts, and different intake and exhaust versus earlier 190E variants. Paired with a Getrag five-speed dog-leg manual sending power to the rear wheels, this is the actual homologation-special hardware that made the 190E Evo II a genuine DTM legend — not a modern reinterpretation of it.

HWA’s Version Is Objectively Better Engineered, And That’s Not The Point

There’s no real debate that HWA’s modern tribute is more powerful, more sophisticated, and almost certainly more reliable day to day. But “more sophisticated” isn’t always the deciding factor for buyers in this specific market. An original Evo II carries genuine period-correct DTM homologation history, the actual chassis and drivetrain that competed and won in period — provenance no modern tribute, however well executed, can replicate.

The Condition On This Particular Car Is Remarkable

At 36,496 miles, this Evo II has covered real distance for a car this rare, yet the listing photos show a genuinely well-preserved example — Blue Black Metallic paint free of significant scratches, all the original wild aero pieces intact (flared arches, front splitter, that unmistakable rear wing), and a clean cloth-and-vinyl interior. For a 500-unit production run car pushing four decades old, that’s a genuinely impressive state of preservation.

My Take

This is a rare moment where the “smart money” choice and the “heart” choice might actually be the same car. HWA’s tribute is a legitimately impressive piece of modern engineering, and I don’t doubt it’s the more usable, more dependable daily proposition. But if you can get an actual, numbers-matching, DTM-homologated original 190E Evo II for less money than a brand-new tribute, the cool factor and long-term collectibility argument tilts hard toward the real thing. The auction closes September 24 — whoever wins this one is getting a genuine bargain relative to what HWA is charging for its modern take.

Would you rather have the original’s provenance or the restomod’s modern reliability and refinement? I think this is one of the rare cases where I’d actually lean toward the original.