During a recent visit to the LOH Collection in Germany I saw this Mercedes-Benz 190E in a silver Berlin 2000 olympic games livery. It sat there among the other competition machinery, but more on that later. This 190E was raced by Ellen Lohr in the 1993 DTM season. It was still recognisably the 190E everybody knows, but underneath it was already evolving into a Class 1 car as Mercedes adapted to the new regulations.
Lohr drove this #2 AMG-Mercedes entered under the Berlin 2000 Olympic bid programme. By then the 190E had already established itself as one of the cars that defined DTM, but 1993 was really the beginning of a different era. Alfa Romeo had arrived with the technologically advanced 155 V6 TI, forcing Mercedes to push the ageing W201 platform further than ever before.
Seeing the car in person makes you appreciate just how extreme these late 190Es had become. The double rear wing, widened arches and purposeful stance leave no doubt about its intentions. It may have started life as a compact executive saloon, but by 1993 it had evolved into a pure racing machine.
The factory engineers reworked the car throughout the season. Aerodynamics were revised, the chassis was updated and the naturally aspirated 2.5-litre four-cylinder gained further development. The result was arguably the most sophisticated version of the DTM 190E ever built.
Lohr spent the year racing against some of the biggest names in touring car racing: Klaus Ludwig, Bernd Schneider, Roland Asch, Kurt Thiim, Alessandro Nannini and eventual champion Nicola Larini. She wasn’t fighting for the title, but she was consistently competitive and ended the season tenth in the championship, her strongest DTM points finish.
What makes the car significant today is that it represents the end of the line for the 190E in top-level DTM competition. Mercedes would move to the new C-Class the following year, leaving the 1993 cars as the final chapter in the story of the famous 190E touring car.
For Lohr, the car also marked an important stage in a career that had already made history. A year earlier she had become the first, and still the only, woman to win a DTM race. The silver Berlin 2000 machine may not have added another victory to that record, but it remains one of the most recognisable Mercedes entries of the season and one of the last factory-backed 190Es to race at the sharp end of the DTM field.