Saturday Sleuthing: A Miedecke Mercedes Marriage

What do a Red Bull F1 boss, an Australian touring car star of yesteryear, a former World Drivers Champion and an Olympic gold medallist all have in common?

The answer is that they were all part of the team that tackled Bathurst with today's featured cars on Saturday Sleuthing!

We're mapping the very unique story of not one, but two cars that have travelled the world and back as an almost inseparable pair - the two Mercedes-Benz 190Es which first raced on our shores at Bathurst in 1986.

Before Erebus Motorsport entered V8 Supercars in 2013 with their E63 AMGs, these two cars were the last to carry the three-pointed star in the Australian Touring Car Championship.

Where they have ended up, and who with is a great story too!

Former Bathurst winner Bob Jane (then distributor of AMG vehicles in Australia and who previously drove a Mercedes-Benz in the Armstrong 500) imported a pair of ex-German Touring Car Championship 190Es run by the RSM Marko team for the 1986 James Hardie 1000 at Bathurst.

'Marko' was none other than Dr. Helmut Marko, the Austrian who we now know as a senior member of the Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso teams in Formula 1 and ex-F1 driver himself.

Marko, you also may remember, also went on to run Craig Lowndes during his ill-fated European Formula 3000 assault in 1997.

The former Grand Prix and World Sportscar racer came to the Mountain with his regular team and another heavyweight of world motorsport in tow - Hans-Werner Aufrecht, one of the founders of the AMG performance division and current chairman of the DTM series.

The driving talent consisted of 1967 Formula 1 World Champion Denny Hulme and Austrian downhill skier/racing driver Franz Klammer in car #41, while local ace and current Touring Car Masters star Andrew Miedecke paired up with young German Jorg van Ommen in car #14.

The little 190Es were powered by a 2.3-litre Cosworth-developed engine which was outgunned at Mount Panorama, but the car of Hulme and 1976 Olympic champion skier Klammer finished a very solid ninth outright.

Miedecke and van Ommen's entry was less fortunate - contact sent van Ommen into the fence at Murray's Corner before it even completed a lap.

Both cars stayed on for the Sun Pacific 300 endurance race at Calder two weeks later, before they were sold to Phil Ward and the late Llynden Riethmuller to run under the Riethmuller-Ward International Motorsport banner from 1987.

Ward numbered the Hulme/Klammer chassis '01' and the Miedecke/van Ommen car '02', alternating between both during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

'01' was the chassis raced more often, including in four Bathurst 1000s that saw some notable moments.

Ward infamously spun this car at McPhillamy Park during the 1988 race, which sent the 190E rolling through the sand trap. He then admirably tried to dig the car out himself by hand, before eventually calling on punters at the top of the Mountain to help give the Mercedes a shove so Ward could drive it out back to the pits!

This was the car later driven to a Bathurst class victory (and 12th outright) by Ward and John Goss in 1990, which was the 1974 Bathurst winner's last start on the Mountain.

Ward then converted both 190Es to two-litre Super Touring configuration and raced '01' in the 1994 Australian Super Touring Championship in the colours of Technophone Mobile Phones. The car's last Australian race was at Bathurst in 1994, when motoring journalist Peter McKay and Jamie Miller drove it to 25th outright.

The lesser-raced '02' chassis was campaigned by Ward and Riethmuller in a handful of events during 1987, including the Bathurst 1000 with backing from Sephco Waste Bins. In 1988 Ward appeared in selected ATCC and AMSCAR events, as well as the Sandown 500 and Adelaide Grand Prix support races.

Its last races in Australia were a pair of Super Touring championship events in 1994 with McKay.

Ward sold both cars in 1996 to Englishman Martin Stretton, a noted car collector who intended to run them in the North American Touring Car Championship under the Ecurie Atlanta banner.

Stretton only contested a single NATCC race in one of the cars at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut, before they were both sold and stored in a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Florida, where they remained until 2004.

Another American, Hall Miller, then purchased both cars and held onto them until 2012, when a pair of Sydney-based Mercedes-Benz dealers and friends imported both cars back to Australia.

The '01' car was sold to Meon Nehrybecki, of Mercedes-Benz Parramatta, while '02' was reunited with one of the men who drove it in 1986 - Andrew Miedecke!

Miedecke actually practiced at Bathurst '86 in the #41 car alongside Hulme, but was switched to the #14 sister car (the one he now owns) for the race. Although van Ommen's incident kept 'Mad Andy' from doing a lap in the race, the open wheel and touring car star did drive the '02' chassis at Calder.

Sleuthing fans will have noticed this car at last year's Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 launch at Darling Harbour, where the 190E and Andrew's son George assembled among a cast of legendary cars and drivers.

To complete the circle, at this very minute Miedecke's car is in the workshop of none other than - Phil Ward!

The long-time Mercedes enthusiast and preparer has been giving the car a mechanical refurbishment for Miedecke, who plans to restore the car to its beautiful black Martins Filter livery with Hulme's name on the windscreen - a touching tribute to his friend who passed away at the 1992 Bathurst 1000 of a heart attack.

It's amazing to think that two cars - let alone one - with racing heritage in Europe and Australia can then spend the best part of two decades in the USA, then find their way back to Australia together where one is being returned to its former glory by two of its former drivers!

Many thanks to Australian Muscle Car Magazine and Chevron Publishing for use of the 1986 Bathurst images in this story.

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