After the Battering -- Rebirth in the 1950s
Article by Graham Robson
Images from Daimler Archives
In 1946, Daimler-Benz was little more than a pile of rubble, but there were plans for new models that had been hidden away for the duration.
Less than a decade later, the company was not only back from the brink of oblivion, but also had introduced the basis for a completely modern lineup of automobiles.
What happened to Daimler-Benz between 1939 and 1945 is a harrowing tale. On the one hand, the business produced a series of magnificent aircraft engines (show me a better engine than the inverted V-12 DB series and I will bow before it). On the other hand, however, the factories, and any equipment that couldn’t be moved and hidden, were systematically pulverized by the USAAF and the British RAF bombing fleets.
With 85 percent of the Sindelfingen assembly plant, 70 percent of Stuttgart-Untertürkheim, and 80 percent of the truck factory at Gaggenau destroyed, it was no wonder that after the fighting was over, (as noted by Ludvigsen in the previous article) the directors felt they had to issue this terse statement: “[F]or all practical purposes, Daimler-Benz has ceased to exist.”
What followed, in the next five years, was a gritty fight back from oblivion, using what could be repaired, building what was possible, but all the time plotting for a complete recovery. Even so, the first new car was not completed until June 1946, and only 1,259 were produced in the whole of 1947.
Reviving Production with the Prewar 170V
In eight years – 1939 to 1947 – the contrast was complete. In the last year of prewar production, Mercedes-Benz had been producing a large range of cars, starting with the “entry level” 170V sedans and topping out with the then-new 580Ks and the even larger 770K “Grosser.” But in 1945, they were incapable of building any cars at all. With stern resolve, however, Daimler-Benz management set out to build something – anything – that would re-establish the three-pointed star on the market.
To a company so impoverished, and reduced to hand-to-mouth existence converting military vehicles to civilian use, there was no question of reintroducing a range, but just one model. No sooner had one or two factory buildings been repaired in the Stuttgart and Sindelfingen areas than they discovered that many of the facilities capable of producing the 170V had either survived, could be repaired, or could be re-created. With that in mind, one of the company’s more modern late-1930s models – it had originally been launched in 1935 – very tentatively came back to life. Advanced in some areas but old-fashioned in others (the tubular chassis had all-independent suspension, and there was an all-synchromesh gearbox, though the engine was a conventional side-valve unit), it had major advantages – it was there, it was available, and it could be bodied in a variety of ways.
This, in fact, is how the company rose from its knees, dusted itself off, and began to look ahead, again, with confidence. The 170V (or W136, as it was known by its internal chassis code), in fact, was well-established – no fewer than 91,048 had been produced before production was suspended in 1942 – and once the basic chassis had been made available, the first were then bodied as delivery vans, pickup trucks, and ambulances, many commissioned and allocated by the occupying powers, who were, in this part of Germany, the American forces.
Until the first of the magisterial 300s (the highly prestigious W186s) went on sale in 1952, the recovery of Daimler-Benz as a business, the repair and restoration of the factories, and the gradual increase in production was completely centered on the 170V (W136) range, though there was continual change, improvement, and refinement to make that possible.
There is certainly no space here to detail all the changes made – except to point out that annual assembly of this family at Sindelfingen rose from 214 in 1946 to 33,790 in 1952 – and to note that eventually there were 14 different subderivatives, including a new-type diesel (the 170D of 1949), a cabriolet (also launched in 1949), “tail-lifted” types to increase luggage accommodation, and the introduction of the 220 evolution, which came complete with an 80-brake-horsepower, 2,195cc overhead-cam, 6-cylinder engine. The 220s also had a restyled nose, wherein the headlamps were faired in to the front fenders.
Boundless Ambition: The New-Generation 300
All this public and high-profile activity, of course, hid the fact that the company’s fast-recovering team of engineers, led by Fritz Nallinger, had been beavering away for years, behind closed doors, on two important new private-car ranges. Neither would be ready for sale before the 1950s, and neither would have been economically viable earlier, even if they could have been introduced. But by the mid-1950s, they indicated just what Mercedes-Benz – the reborn Mercedes-Benz – was now all about. There was the prestigious, and therefore high-priced, 300 range, which would precede the first of the truly “postwar” ranges, what we now know as the Ponton cars.
This was quite astonishing. Only six years after the Mercedes-Benz business seemed to have become no more than a pile of rubble, the hardworking team unveiled a magnificent, high-tech range of cars – big cars, powerful cars, and, above all, expensive cars – that were completely different from anything previously familiar at Sindelfingen. Philosophically, and in engineering terms, they were the direct descendants of what had gone before, in the 1930s, with the same no-compromise approach to chassis, suspension, engine and transmission design, with the added ambition that there would be high style, several variants, and no need to apologize for “making do” in any direction.
For the proud, and fast-recovering, concern, the new 300s (W186 in chassis code-speak) were new from end to end, though familiar in what they set out to achieve. The tubular cruciform-type chassis frame along with the all-independent suspension was a definite update on anything first seen in the late 1930s, but the sturdy new 3-liter 6-cylinder engine (seven crankshaft main bearings, an alloy head, and a single overhead-camshaft valve gear) was as new as the engineers could make it. Maybe the pundits were not overly impressed with the original 115-brake-horsepower peak power output, but as the years passed, this was progressively boosted to 125 brake horsepower, 160 brake horsepower, and even 175 brake horsepower, which proved just how much potential had once been locked in place.
It wasn’t merely that the company produced such a good car at this time, but the sheer chutzpah with which it made its mark. Not only was the engineering as advanced as that of any other European road car of the day, but the style was unashamedly up-market, and the equipment lavish. Nallinger’s brief had been to produce one of the world’s most technically sophisticated cars – and he succeeded.
It was the detail that stood out – the provision of driver-controlled electrical control over auxiliary torsion bars that could be operated to stiffen up the rear suspension under load, the launch of an engine that would perform brilliantly in a phalanx of new models for more than 20 years to come, and the style, which was a restrained look that would never seem out of place.
It was, of course, always a costly car, which may explain why only 11,430 examples were produced in 11 years. Yet no one, surely, was ever likely to complain about an exclusive machine such as the 300S and 300Sc types, of which only 760 examples – roadsters, cabriolets, and coupes – would be built in the 1950s.
Of course, I need only remind everyone that without the development of the W186 300 range, there would never have been a 300SL. The 300SL’s complex, multi-tube, space-frame chassis, of course, was unique, but the engine, the transmission, and the suspension elements were all directly developed from those already used in the sedans. We love the 300SL so much that we intend to make a special feature of it in the September-October issue of The Star.
A Mercedes-Benz for Everyone?
Even so, if the 300 and the 300SL made headlines in the 1950s, it was the Ponton that paid the bills. Here was the first – the very first – Mercedes-Benz car to feature a unit-construction body shell, and here was the car that sold in truly awesome numbers. Statistics? Boring? Yes, maybe – but I defy anyone to be less than impressed by the total Ponton production figure of 559,369. It was this car – only this car – that set Mercedes-Benz firmly on its way once again to becoming a colossus. Before Ponton, there had been ambition but not enough cash flow – but afterward, the sky seemed to be the limit.
Visually there might not have been anything exciting about the Ponton range, but its place in Mercedes-Benz history should never be ignored. Eight years after the war, with the company well and truly on its feet again, it was time to spend big bucks on new models – and to look for long production runs to justify that. Although the 170V family had lasted longer, and sold faster, than any pessimist would ever have dared to forecast, the replacement – the engineers knew it as the W120 – had a big job to do.
Mercedes-Benz therefore took a deep breath and decided that the new range should be built on an all-steel unit-construction shell, the first the company had devised. In Europe, there was nothing new about unit-body structures, of course. Citroën had embraced the layout in 1934, Opel (controlled by General Motors) had followed in 1935, and several other car makers – Austin, Fiat, Ford, Morris, Renault, and Volvo, for instance – had already joined in, but it was still a big step for Mercedes-Benz.
This may explains why there was innovation in the structure but none at all in the running gear, and perhaps why the style was so outwardly mundane. Mercedes-Benz knew that, and remained unconcerned. Although many experts still struggle to spot the visual differences between a 180 and a 219, a 180D and a 220S, they were there, significantly and successfully, and each had a purpose.
Differences? Of course – apart from several different 4- and 6-cylinder gasoline and 4-cylinder diesel engines, there were different cabin lengths (more space for passengers), three different wheelbases, and three different body styles. Could Joe Q. Customer have asked for more? Only if he wanted a fresh style, and that would have to wait until the next generation of cars arrived at the end of the decade.
All this, of course, was a prelude to what would follow in the late 1950s and the 1960s. New styles, larger cars, more enterprising technical specifications, and an aggressive approach to sales were all building up, rapidly. Not only that, but the company now found that once again it could afford motor racing to further its reputation; it is no coincidence that the W196 Grand Prix and 300SLR sports-car programs took shape while Ponton sales were on the rise.
It was because of cars like the later-model Pontons, as well as the sports cars, that the American market took more of an interest in the three-pointed star, encouraging an expansion that has rarely faltered since then. We will analyze those programs in detail in the next issue.
The next decade, particularly in North America, was going to be exciting.