One of the significant changes in the luxury-car market over the past 15 years is the increasing overlap and morphing of archrivals BMW and Mercedes-Benz, as they pursue each other’s well-heeled American market share. Where once the division between luxury (Benz) and sporting steed (BMW) was clear, Benzes have become more sporting and engaging, and Bimmers have become more stolid, cushy, and tech-focused.
If you want to understand a root of this issue, you need to go back to the 1980s, when these brands began this battle in earnest, using their compact sports sedans, the Mercedes 190E (W201) and BMW 3-series (E30), as proxies. Fortunately for you, and me, my beloved mechanic and dear friend Jared Lamanna from Churchill Classics in Eldred, New York, had a low-mileage exemplar of each and was willing to share. On an intensely foggy fall morning, I took a 25,000-mile Smoke Silver 1991 190E 2.6 and a 76,000 mile, white, automatic, 1989 BMW 325i convertible out in the clouds to see how they, and my memories of them, held up.
First, a Bit of History
In the early 1970s, Mercedes-Benz outsold BMW in America by a two-to-one margin. But as the decade ended and the ’80s started, BMW had begun closing that gap, based in part on the success of its widening range of vehicles, particularly its 3-series, which had become something of a benchmark in the sport-sedan market. Mercedes, a nearly century-old fabricator of bank-vault sedans for bankers, decided it wanted in, so it had its teams of engineering obsessives create a new platform, the so-called “Baby Benz,” to slot below its then entry-level offering. (Benz wasn’t consistently using the C-class nomenclature at that point, but that’s what this car became.)
Master designer Bruno Sacco, responsible for nearly every memorable Benz from the Malaise Era including the C111, W123, and W126, penned a shape that immediately conveyed core brand aesthetics like timelessness and longevity in a taut, beveled package. The 190 was introduced here in 1983 with a 113-hp 2.3-liter I-4; the 158-hp 2.6-liter I-6 in ours showed up a few years later, in 1986.
BMW, meanwhile, had made its name in America (and in this magazine) with its raucous yet practical 2002 sports sedan and followed it up with its less beloved (though underrated, and short-lived) 320i. It introduced its iconic E30 in 1982, working through a series of inline-four and inline-six-cylinder engines: a 103-hp 1.8-liter four, a low-revving 121-hp (but 170-pound-foot) 2.7-liter six, then the freer-wheeling 168-hp 2.5-liter six in 1987.
But in the process of growing its power, it also began to march upscale, as the automakers began recognizing that profits could be derived from selling more highly optioned luxury vehicles.
We Begin with the Benz
The first thing I notice about the 190 is its proportions. It is small by contemporary standards, a full foot shorter than a 2023 C-class, or about the length of a current GLA. But it looks every inch a premium car, defining, as it did, Sacco’s and Mercedes’s aesthetic of the era, which was oriented around refinement, razor edges, and elegant linearity. The car has a lot of angles—the dash binnacle, even the little digital external temperature display set within it, echo the mitered-rectangle motif that dominates the exterior—but it doesn’t have a bad one. Its auric argent metallic is the perfect period shade, as flashy as a Bill Blass gown, further shrouded by the greyed 15-inch gullideckel (manhole cover) alloys.
Similarly sized is the giant MB steering wheel inside, which tills the 190 with more precision than one expects of a Benz of the era. Inputs are direct and communicative and handling is downright crisp, though never rigid. And thanks to the bigger engine, there’s some grunt, though I wouldn’t exactly call it fast. It is thrustily sufficient and can easily reach extra-legal speeds and linger there seemingly forever.
Yet, even in the refined transmission—which, like most Benzes of the era, starts in second gear unless resolutely prodded—there is a soupçon of sportiness that one wouldn’t expect from a Benz, illustrating that the brand was not going downmarket with this offering but shifting toward a firmness in its three-pointed-star firmament. I even click it through its lower gear detents manually, and it complies readily. Its power-operated seats, automated climate control, and wood veneer trim are pure luxury, as is its refinement—it’s one of the few cars that can be complimented by saying that it drives bigger than it is. But one can sense the incipient champing onrush of Mercedes’s sporting pretensions. (The brand made W201s with a five-speed manual, as well as a hot-rod 16-valve 2.3-liter engine, so this was no accident.)
On to the BMW
In high school, I drove a 1973 BMW 2002. This was the mid-’80s, so it was just an old used car back then, but it was still special. I was a weird New Wave kid with a spiraling mop of hair and thrift store clothes, so the bland engineers in my local BMW Car Club outpost weren’t sure what to make of me when I joined. But when the region’s leading BMW dealer brought a new five-speed 325i coupe to a meeting, they had no choice but to let me drive. Its silken rush smote me.
I had similarly high hopes for the 1989 325i pictured here. It has that alluring rounded three-box shape, quad headlamps, and narrow kidneys that pretty much defined the marque. It has the interior aroma of toasted oil endemic to BMWs from that era. It has 14-inch bottle-cap wheels. But while one expects an optioned-up, leather-lined Mercedes to do the shifting for you, an automatic transmission is more of a disappointment in a BMW. The trans, plus the convertible top make it heavier and less responsive, burdens that pile atop the throes of adolescent reminiscence. Still, with the top down, even at speed, the mood inside is controlled, not blustery, like an ideal convertible GT. (I didn’t try it with the top up because I love fun.)
The M20 straight-six doesn’t feel like a sports-car engine here but is adequately robust. It readily gets the E30 up to 80 mph and pins it there. The automatic, with its crumb-brush selector trough and T-shaped handle, can be shifted manually, but it does a seamlessly fluid job cogging up and down when left on its own—who remembers slushboxes being this benign? There are heated seats and a trip computer, features lacking in the Benz. And the ride is surprisingly creamy; I credit the suspension wizards and 65-series sidewalls. Also, BMW’s luxury aspirations.
I wonder if anyone cross-shopped a pre-owned 380 or 560SL back then and ended up in a new 325i cabriolet?
Contributing Editor
Brett Berk (he/him) is a former preschool teacher and early childhood center director who spent a decade as a youth and family researcher and now covers the topics of kids and the auto industry for publications including CNN, the New York Times, Popular Mechanics and more. He has published a parenting book, The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting, and since 2008 has driven and reviewed thousands of cars for Car and Driver and Road & Track, where he is contributing editor. He has also written for Architectural Digest, Billboard, ELLE Decor, Esquire, GQ, Travel + Leisure and Vanity Fair.
