Mercedes-Benz 190 E HWA Can Win The World’s Greatest Race

Looking like a hero race car is one thing, but now HWA’s Evo wants to prove it’s got the substance to back up that swagger. HWA, whose creation is a modern reimagining of the Mercedes 190 Evolution II, has confirmed it will enter two cars in the 2026 Nurburgring 24 Hours.
 

The announcement was made at this weekend’s 2025 N24 event, where the company presented two of its development cars dressed in motorsport livery to give a glimpse of how the racers will look.
 
The cars will also perform demo laps piloted by Roland Asch and Klaus Ludig, two German motorsport legends who wrestled with the original Evo IIs in the early 1990s. Asch steered his Evo II to victory at the Nurburgring GP track round of the 1992 DTM season, helping Mercedes win that year’s championship.
 
The cars will also perform demo laps piloted by Roland Asch and Klaus Ludig, two German motorsport legends who wrestled with the original Evo IIs in the early 1990s. Asch steered his Evo II to victory at the Nurburgring GP track round of the 1992 DTM season, helping Mercedes win that year’s championship. Ludwig won at a later race weekend that year, which included both the GP track and the old Norschleife, serving as a support race to that year’s N24.
 

Over the course of the next 12 months the pair will help HWA refine the race versions of €776,000 ($872,000) Evo road car, though a different set of drivers – names TBC – will be behind the wheel come race day in June 2026.
 
HWA knows it won’t be quick enough to challenge for outright victory because the lead GT3-spec cars are simply too fast. But it thinks it’s in with a good chance of coming top in the SP-X experimental class.
 
“Motorsport is in our DNA, and consequently in that of the HWA EVO,” said Martin Marx, CEO of HWA. “As the first road car to bear the HWA name, it was clear to us that we should further develop the project in line with this heritage.”
 

The Legacy Behind the Evo
That heritage goes way deeper than the Evo simply looking a bit like the Evolution II that finally helped Mercedes beat BMW’s mighty M3 in DTM. HWA’s founder, Hans Werner Aufrecht, also co-founded AMG almost 60 years ago and ran the 190 race program for Mercedes and the C-Class and CLK ones that came after.
 
After selling AMG to Benz in 1998, Aufrecht set up HWW and continued to handle Mercedes’ motorsports activities, but the company decided to create its own road car when Mercedes took its racing stuff in-house.
 
Limited Edition Evo Road Cars and Future Plans
Most of the 100 planned Evos have been sold ahead of production starting next year, each car fitted with a bi-turbo V6 making up to 493 hp (500 PS). In a recent interview with Carscoops, HWA’s CTO Gordian von Schöning hinted that the the company will follow the Evo with another ’90s-inspired Mercedes-based car with racing pedigree, this time with V8 power. But it’s real goal is to create a brand new hypercar of its own design before the end of the decade.