Who's HWA, the secretive company behind the £725k Evo saloon and a load of rare hypercars?

There’s a secretive company in Germany that’s about to get rather a lot of attention. It’s called HWA, and its first project is a £725k stunner based on the Mercedes 190E 2.5-16 Evo II.

Who? How much? Fret not, because HWA’s pedigree means its new ‘Evo’ will be worth every penny. You see, founder Hans Werner Aufrecht (hence HWA) was originally the A in AMG, and after selling up to Mercedes in the late ‘90s, set up his motorsport business and never looked back.

HWA subsequently ran Mercedes’ DTM efforts and is the most successful team in series history. Bar Formula One, HWA has pretty much had a hand in every other Mercedes race car too, including the GT3 versions of the SLS and AMG GT. HWA also ran the Mercedes Formula E factory team, winning the driver and manufacturer titles in 2020/21 and 21/22.

Plus, it built the rare-groove CLK DTM road car and the SL65 Black Series. And the naturally aspirated 6.0-litre V12 for the Pagani Huayra R. And all the engineering work for the recent relaunches of the Apollo and De Tomaso brands. On and on the list goes.

Over to Top Gear’s head of car testing, Ollie Marriage, to make sense of just how special HWA really is…