Mercedes 190 Body for BMW Z3

Duesen Bayern, a Japanese company, is offering a complete rebody for BMW Z3 roadsters. The finished car is called the Duesen Bayern Mystar and turns the BMW into a convincing Mercedes 190 roadster, all of the performance and modern engineering of the BMW with all of the classic panache of the Mercedes 190. After digging through a web translation of the Japanese site, here’s what I came up with.

The base vehicle can be a BMW Z3 in any flavor from 1.9L to 3.0L, reflecting the varieties of engines offered over the production run, however lefthand drive is only available in 2.0L and 2.2L versions. All cars must be under 10 thousand kilometers with zero accident history. To protect your investment, they are limiting production to 100 units.

Soft top operation on the 2.0L and 2.2L is manual, on the 2.8L and 3.0L it’s electric and all tops are black. The body panels are FRP (fiber reinforced plastic). Interiors are black leather unless you provide a base Z3 with another color interior.

Six body colors are offered, silver, white, black, red, yellow and blue. The only options listed are several rearview mirror styles and a tire and wheel combination.

It looks like you can order a base vehicle from the company or supply your own and the warranty is dependent on who supplies it but it’s difficult to nail that down from the translation.

The end product looks pretty nice and follows on the same idea as the Corvette rebody and the SN65 Mustang, current running gear with a classic body. The success of something like this depends on keeping the quality of the finished car at a very high level. It looks like a nice design. Wonder what we’ll see next.

Link: Duesen Bayern via Retro Thing

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