Bam! Mint sold another one – First Salvo: ’86 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3 16V Cosworth
Just in! We received an email from a reader who just alerted us to his purchase of this 16V Mercedes. Congrats to Andrew and hopefully a story will follow.
Jimmy Carter gets the blame for a lot of things but you might want to tip your hat towards Plains, Georgia for this one. The unassuming jewel of a Mercedes-Benz, the 190E 2.3 16 Valve, was engineered in response to Carter’s threat to increase fuel economy and emissions standards to ridiculous levels. The skunkwerks at M-B called the folks in Northampton England at Cosworth Engineering to come up with a killer, fuel-efficient engine to put into their 190E body. The results were spectacular. They originally thought it would be a successful rally car and it would have been up to the task but the cost of campaigning a team was unmanageable. They began racing the 190E 2.3 in a series of equally matched cars driven by Formula 1 drivers. That’s how the public got wind that this unassuming baby Benz was something special. The US market received under 2,000 units mostly equipped with the 5-speed Getrag dog-leg gearbox. The engine was detuned to 167hp and the entire car was said by many to be over engineered to the max in Mercedes-Benz tradition. Today’s featured Benz is a remarkable car with horrible photos. It is a 2-owner car with only 36,000 miles. It was in storage in a collection for over 10 years and recently been made road worthy again with $3,000 in maintenance. It is black with black interior and has Recaro Sports Seats with what is said to be an immaculate interior. This somewhat historic Benz is selling for an asking price of $12,500. The editors at Automobile Magazine think this car is better than many contemporary cars in performance ride and handling. Sounds like a bargain to us. Click here to contact the seller.