When searching for a project car to invest their time and hard earned money into, most people choose a chassis that has a lot of aftermarket support, and isn't too hard to work on.
Croatian based Biox Performance certainly isn't your average workshop, and a 1961 Mercedes Ponton body sitting on a Mitsubishi Evolution 9 chassis seemed like a good idea.
Before we go into detail on the 'MerEvo' creation, you have to understand that these guys are no stranger to big builds. A VW Lupo with two V6 engines crammed into its small body is another notable creation — but that's a story for another day.
Today the focus is on their Mercedes Ponton that was never originally designed to go fast, but is now a certified all-wheel drive road rocket.
Combining a wrecked Mitsubishi Evolution 9 and a rusty 1961 Mercedes-Benz Ponton takes a serious amount of skill and courage, two things that Biox Performance must possess a lot of.
In order to make this borderline-insane swap work, the workshop had to take the old Mercedes' body off the rusty chassis and plop onto the Mitsubishi one. You might wonder why they didn't just stick the engine and driveline in the Ponton, but the 214kW four-banger might've torn the old chassis to pieces.
Once the body was ready, they stripped the Mitsubishi down to its bare chassis in order to fit the body. This is a perfect example of when the old measure twice, cut once rule comes in handy.
After fitting the body, a hefty cage was installed in the car, and the engine bay was prepped for the 4G63T to take pride of place again.
The 2.0-litre turbocharged Mitsubishi power plant produces 214kw, and 392Nm of torque which is sent to all four wheels through a six-speed manual transmission. Compared to the Ponton's original 0-100 time of 17 seconds, on release, the Evolution 9 first could make that same sprint in just 4.5 seconds.
Sitting in a garage with the intercooler piping poking menacing out from underneath the grille looking like a German Darth Vader, this was the last the internet saw of the Mercedes before things went quiet.
It looks like the workshop moved onto other projects, and haven't updated the gallery since the first post back in 2016. Fans of the build have been asking for updates on the build for over a year now to no avail — hopefully we get some closure soon.
For now though, these incredible pictures are all we have.
