Edgar Chu on designing the HWA EVO

Few cars come with quite as much design baggage as the Mercedes-Benz 190 E 2.5-16 Evolution II. Created as a road-going homologation model for Mercedes-Benz's DTM programme, Bruno Sacco's dramatically bewinged sports saloon has subsequently become one of the most recognisable Mercedes designs of its era. Reinterpreting it therefore required a degree of restraint.

The HWA EVO takes the W201 as its starting point but transforms it extensively, retaining the fundamental identity of the original while introducing dramatically different proportions, engineering and surface treatment. Limited to 100 examples, it uses a front-mid-engine layout and targeted 50:50 weight distribution.

For the exterior, HWA worked with former Mercedes-AMG designer Edgar Chu, founder of REV Auto Design. Chu's previous work includes the Mercedes-AMG GT R, GT3, GT4, GT R Pro and GT Black Series.

Rather than simply modernising the original car's styling, Chu approached the HWA EVO through three fundamentals – proportion, surface and detail – retaining the visual cues that make the Evo II immediately recognisable while changing the way those forms are created.

Car Design News caught up with Chu at CDE Classic where the designer presented framed original sketches of the early designs to Florian Urbitsch of the Loh Collection. The collection offers a particularly unusual perspective on the project allowing the original Evo II and its modern reinterpretation to be viewed together.

I describe it as being a little like designing a suit. It's about the detailing, the proportion, the cut, the buttons and the lapel

Car Design News: Florian, seeing the cars together, do people immediately make the connection between the original Evo II and the HWA EVO?

Florian Urbitsch: When you see them next to each other, it's pretty close. It's really cool to see how they managed to make it look like the old car when it is actually a completely new car.

CDN: Edgar, what was the genesis of the project? Why did HWA decide to create this car?

Edgar Chu: HWA previously had the contract with AMG for the GT3 race car, and that contract was coming to an end. HWA wanted to come out with its own brand and its own identity, and this was the car that fitted best with its story.

CDN: You're starting with this incredible legacy that you have to honour and respect, while also creating something new. How did you find that balance?

EC: I describe it as being a little like designing a suit. It's about the detailing, the proportion, the cut, the buttons and the lapel.

Designers can always add another line or create another styling feature, but with a suit it is much more about the details. You need a very good understanding of surface and proportion, and you need to understand the spirit of the car.

Sometimes it's more about doing less. With that in mind, you try to balance the past and the future while creating something emotional and something new that the fans can relate to.

CDN: Mercedes-Benz design of that period was about strong surfaces and great proportions, but there wasn't much ornament or flourish. It was quite pure. How did you translate that?

EC: I did a presentation about how to make a box sexy. Back then, the approach to surfacing was almost like chiselling the shape out of wood. It was very angular and very logical.

But that's also what customers recognise. What I decided to do was keep the lines because those graphic lines are what people's eyes recognise. But the surfaces used to achieve those lines have been given a new interpretation. You create the same visual impression, but the treatment is totally different.

CDN: Looking at your sketches, how early did this direction appear in the process?

EC: That was pretty much the initial sketch for the exterior, and it became the direction we ultimately chose. At the beginning we also tried a two-door version, but people recognise this car as a saloon, so we decided to retain the four-door configuration.

CDN: But underneath that recognisable silhouette, the proportions have actually changed quite substantially?

EC: Yes. The front wheel has been moved forward by about 50mm and the engine has been moved backwards, so we have that front-mid-engine proportion and 50:50 balance.

That also creates much more space here, which is where this functional air-outlet feature comes from. It's probably one of the most emotional features because you get this three-dimensional, sculptural feeling. It gives the car a very different interpretation.

CDN: You've also completely redesigned the headlights and taillights. Why were those elements so important?

EC: They are a very good detail through which we can show the next step in technology. Actually, the headlights and taillights were the most difficult parts of the whole exterior to design, simply because of the cost and time involved. But we invested in them.

The headlight is like the eye of the face, so it is a very important detail. We made it sportier by reducing its visual height and making it more aggressive – almost like a beast with focused eyes ready to attack.

It's easy in design to add an extra line or another flashy styling feature. It's much harder to approach it with a minimalist mindset, find the right balance and intentionally leave things out

We retained a similar reflector-cup graphic to the original but finished it in aluminium rather than chrome. At the rear, we also reduced the visual height of the taillight with a carbon insert running horizontally around it.

Instead of emphasising the vertical elements of the original, we emphasise the horizontal. The graphic follows the width of the car and celebrates the wide body.

CDN: The car is dramatically wider than the original, but it doesn't necessarily look heavier. How did you manage that?

EC: I gave the car more rake, so visually it's speeding forwards. All the design feature lines vanish towards the same point. So even though, package-wise, the car is much wider, you don't feel that it is slow. It's bigger and wider, but it still has that sense of speed and movement.

CDN: Yet despite all those changes, it's immediately recognisable as an Evo II.

EC: That's why I keep coming back to designing a suit. It still has to look like a suit, but it can be something different and new.

It's easy in design to add an extra line or another flashy styling feature. It's much harder to approach it with a minimalist mindset, find the right balance and intentionally leave things out. You have to identify and understand the spirit of the car: what's necessary and what isn't. Then design it with a purpose. That's how timeless design is created.

CDN: Florian, the Loh Collection gives you a fairly extraordinary way of looking at that continuity. What cars do you have?

FU: With the original Evo II, 500 had to be built so Mercedes could go racing in DTM. In Mr Loh's collection there's number 1 and number 500, plus the DTM car that looks like the 1992 DTM champion.

When the HWA EVO came out, Mr Loh discussed with Mr Aufrecht whether it would be possible to get number 1 as well. After some discussions, he managed to get it. So now we have number 1 of the 100 HWA EVOs. And in the family collection there's also the number 1 prototype.

CDN: And there's a particularly interesting design connection with chassis number 1 of the original Evo II?

EC: I heard that the number one chassis was owned by Bruno Sacco.

FU: It was. And I think that's a very interesting story because back then Mercedes wasn't about big wings and wide wheelarches. You might have thought that Bruno Sacco didn't really like having this car in the Mercedes line-up and that it was there because they needed it to go racing.

But he could have had any development car or press car to drive. Instead, it seems Bruno Sacco liked the car so much that there was some convincing involved in getting chassis number 1 into his private possession.

He didn't just take it for a drive. He bought the car and made sure he got number 1. We still have the original papers with his signature and address in the car, which I think is a very interesting story.