RideLust

Looks almost stock!

Your neighbor’s candy apple red Tri-Five Chevy with a Corvette-derived smallblock might be a pretty sick way to update a tired, neglected jalopy, but not everyone wants to roll in such conspicuousness. And to be honest, as long as it’s a big-ass engine stuffed into an unlikely place, one really shouldn’t be picky. So if your tastes run more towards sleepers (or Q-ships, for you Bond aficionados), and especially if you have a thing for oil-burners, this Mercedes 190D might have your number. What it doesn’t have is it’s original mill, discarded by some mad-scientist types at Mercedes in favor of a modern OM651 diesel out of the current C-Class, good for 204 HP and 368 ft-lbs of torque. That’s torquier than a phalanx of tractors, so it’s no wonder it is swift. How swift? Make the jump to find out.

Cue mad scientist laughter!

Well, the raw number is 6.2 seconds from a standstill to 62 mph, which ain’t shabby, but we’d be fools not to note that this is a full 11.9 seconds quicker than stock for this ’92 190D. It also gets around 42 MPG, and as a diesel, there’s no doubt that with minimal tweaks you could saddle up to any Winchell’s Donuts in your area and load up on premium grade saturated grease, turning the means for the intense obesity of our nation into fuel for your ride! Alas, we don’t want to imply that you could head down to your local Mercedes mad scientist lab and pick one up, as we think this was purely an exercise in the particularly fruitful boredom of some amazingly precise Germans. In any event, we hope others take inspiration and consider cramming modern diesels under just about anything. A Cummins-powered Chrysler Imperial? Why, that’s a brilliant idea …

[Source: Autopia]