Most tuning houses in the 1980s followed a predictable formula. Take a Mercedes-Benz, add displacement, add aerodynamics, add speed. The result was usually a faster, louder version of what Stuttgart had already built. Erich Schulz had a different instinct. Working from a modest facility in Kleinenbroich, a small town in the Rhein-Kreis Neuss region near Düsseldorf, Schulz didn't just want to make Mercedes-Benz cars faster. He wanted to make them into things they were never intended to be.
Where AMG saw engines waiting to be enlarged and BRABUS saw luxury waiting to be amplified, Schulz saw body structures waiting to be reimagined. His company, Schulz Tuning, became known not primarily for horsepower figures or top speed records, but for structural conversions that fundamentally changed what a Mercedes-Benz could look like, how many doors it had, whether it had a roof at all, or how many axles sat beneath it. In a decade defined by excess and aggression, Schulz operated more like a coachbuilder than a traditional tuner, cutting steel, reshaping silhouettes, and producing cars that existed nowhere in any Mercedes-Benz catalogue.
It was the W201, the so-called Baby Benz, that truly showcased Schulz's appetite for reinvention. When the compact Mercedes arrived in the early 1980s, Schulz looked at it and saw not one product, but several. His first major move was the V8 conversion. Long before AMG offered anything beyond the Cosworth-developed four-cylinder for the W201, Schulz was transplanting the M117 5.0-litre V8 from the C107 450 SLC into the compact sedan. The result was a car with a power-to-weight ratio of just 5.5 kg per horsepower, a figure that embarrassed much of the competition. Auto Motor und Sport tested the car in 1984 under the headline "Volle Kraft Voraus", full speed ahead, and praised the raw performance, though they noted that Schulz had to shorten the front subframe to accommodate the V8's exhaust routing. The full conversion could reach over DM 80,000 when fully optioned. For context, a standard 190E cost around DM 30,000 at the time.
But Schulz wasn't finished with the W201. When BMW unveiled the E30 3 Series Cabriolet at the 1985 Frankfurt Motor Show, Mercedes-Benz had no answer. Schulz saw the gap and filled it. The Schulz 190E Cabriolet was an elaborate structural conversion. The rear doors were deleted, the front doors lengthened using metal from the original rear door panels, and the B-pillar was cut and relocated rearward. The floor pans received 2mm-thick sheet steel reinforcement throughout, and the soft top mechanism was adapted from a modified R107 unit, fitted with custom-cast aluminium armatures designed by Schulz himself. The conversion cost DM 47,400, roughly the price of a new BMW 325i Cabriolet with options, which goes some way toward explaining why only a handful were ever built.
The most famous of these open-top W201s belonged to 1982 Formula 1 World Champion Keke Rosberg. Rosberg served as brand ambassador for Schulz Tuning and commissioned a bespoke example that was displayed at the Geneva Motor Show before being delivered to him at the Norisring during a Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschaft race weekend. His car wore widened steel fenders, a full Schulz bodykit, a SEC-style bonnet with an OEM SEC grille, and was powered by a 3.8-litre M116 V8 producing 204 horsepower through a four-speed automatic. Recaro sport seats, fine white leather over contrasting black carpets, Zebrano wood trim, and a custom 300 km/h Schulz speedometer completed the package. It was part boulevard cruiser, part grand touring cabriolet, and entirely unlike anything else on the road.
Then came perhaps the most curious chapter in the Schulz story: the 190E Compakt, also known as the 190E City. In the early 1990s, Schulz cut the W201 body behind the C-pillar and grafted on the rear hatch and tail lights from a W124 T-Modell estate, creating a proper hatchback out of the Baby Benz. Offered in both three-door and five-door configurations, it was powered by the 2.6-litre M103 inline-six producing 160 horsepower, more than any hot hatchback of the period could claim. Mercedes-Benz had explored a similar concept internally in 1981 but shelved it. Schulz built what Stuttgart would not. Mercedes was reportedly uneasy about the project and did not permit the car to wear the three-pointed star, a restriction that said more about the factory's protectiveness than about the quality of the work.
Beyond the W201, Schulz's ambitions extended across the Mercedes range. The W126 S-Class received stretched Pullman-style limousine conversions, with one example measuring nearly seven metres in length. The R107 SL and W123 both featured in the early Schulz catalogue. He even ventured beyond Mercedes, converting the BMW E28 5 Series into a Touring estate years before BMW itself would offer the body style. But perhaps the most extraordinary creation to leave Kleinenbroich was the G-Class 6x6, a genuine three-axle conversion with three locking differentials and a 5.0-litre V8, built decades before Mercedes-AMG would stun the world with the factory G63 AMG 6x6 in 2013.
The company eventually closed, and today information about Schulz Tuning is fragmented, scattered across German-language forum posts, old brochure listings, and the occasional auction catalogue. The cars themselves are exceptionally rare, many of them one-offs or produced in single-digit numbers. Yet for those who study the broader ecosystem of 1980s Mercedes modification, Schulz represents something important: proof that the culture around these cars was never limited to straight-line speed or aesthetic aggression. There was room, even in that loudest of decades, for a man with a cutting torch, a clear vision, and the conviction that a Mercedes-Benz could become something its creators never imagined.