Heritage: In a League of His Own
Fritz Nallinger (1898-1984) was at the center of design, engineering and development at Mercedes-Benz fo r an unprecedented 43 years
Article Graham Robson
Images Daimler Archives
Sometimes the most brilliant and influential of company personalities can be well-known and well-respected within the enterprise, but almost unknown to the general public. Fritz Nallinger was one of those. In a career that started at Benz in the 1920s and ended only when he reached mandatory retirement age in 1965, Nallinger reached the top of the Mercedes-Benz design, engineering and development tree. It was, by any standards, a crowning achievement.
Fritz Nallinger celebrates his 1924 Swiss Alps Rally victory in a Benz 16/50-HP race car, Mannheim plant.
At the Grand Prix of Germany, July 1926, Nallinger (beside the cockpit, with bow tie) confers with race winner Rudolf Caracciola, at the wheel of the supercharged Mercedes 2-liter 8-cylinder racecar.
Youthful promise
In the early years of the century, Friedrich Nallinger was an important technical member of the board of Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft – until he joined Daimler’s major rival, Benz & Cie, in 1911. In 1898, when the Nallinger family was living in Esslingen, near Stuttgart, Friedrich’s fourth son, Fritz, was born. While the father’s career prospered – he became Benz’s technical director in 1912 – his son received an education, served in the German armed forces and joined Benz as a technical design and development engineer in 1922.
This was an exciting period at Mannheim, for Benz was one of the two most influential of German carmakers, even though Germany’s national finances were in chaos: The strain of paying postwar reparations was crippling and caused hyper-inflation to develop. Still, Benz managed to survive. The birth of Mercedes-Benz became inevitable after Benz and Daimler began merger discussions in the mid-1920s. By this stage, the younger Nallinger had become involved in testing – even becoming an occasional “works” driver or riding mechanic in Benz’s colossally fast and successful Blitzen models. Although he never became a famous racecar driver, in those days he definitely had ambitions and always seemed to be interested in the latest technical, mechanical and aerodynamic layouts.
It was during this time that Nallinger, along with another young engineering star, Hans Nibel, began work on designs – based on Edmund Rumpler’s streamlined 1921 Tropfenwagen (“drop car”) – that would eventually develop into the world’s first mid-engined racecar, and explored using Rumpler’s pioneering layout for a range of sports and touring cars. Although this grand vision faded – the Rumpler racecar was not a success – in the following years Rumpler’s configuration spurred Benz engineers to think deeply about rear-engined or mid-engined production cars and the merits of independent suspension.
The rear-engined, swing-axle Rumpler.
Seizing on the promise of the Rumpler configuration, Nallinger and Hans Nibel designed advanced, but ultimately unsucessful mid-engined sports and raing models like this one.
New responsibilities
As every Mercedes-Benz enthusiast knows, the merger between Benz and Daimler – with both companies building Mercedes cars after dropping the Daimler badge some years earlier – took place in June 1926. In 1924, when the two firms first signed the Agreement of Mutual Intent, Nallinger had been appointed to the new board of management; with the merger finalized, his position was reconfirmed.
From that moment, Nallinger moved his office a few miles from Benz in Mannheim to Mercedes-Benz in Untertürkheim; his close colleague at Benz, Nibel, made the same geographical move. Both then worked alongside Ferdinand Porsche, who was enjoying a tempestuous time at Daimler. For all the engineers and managers working in the combined company, this was an exciting and productive period. Not only was an all-new series of production automobiles under development, but Porsche was totally committed to getting the most out of the supercharged 6-cylinder sports cars – starting with the 24/100/140 – the supercars of the day.
Unhappily though, Porsche was also beginning to beat a repetitive drum about the merits of his latest brainstorms, which included going all out to design small, rear-engined cars. Soon this all culminated in a blazing boardroom row with Nibel, which boiled over in October 1928. This resulted in Porsche storming out of the company (he would set up his own high-profile consultancy). Nibel was appointed the undisputed technical director of Mercedes-Benz; Nallinger worked alongside his friend and colleague as the new head of all Mercedes-Benz test and experimental facilities.
Golden years
For Nallinger, this signaled the start of a near 40-year period in which the company not only settled into a very sensible and successful management structure, with real logic applied to engineering, technical progress and to the manner in which new products were developed. In the 1930s, there was not only the launch of the world’s first diesel-engine production cars and the development of magnificent military aircraft engines (see The Star, May-June 2013), but also an increasingly dominant involvement in Grand Prix motor racing.
In those early years, Porsche’s SS/SSK series of supercars matured and improved under Nallinger’s oversight; there was even time for Nibel to commission the ultra-rare and specialized SSKL. But it was in the late 1920s and early ’30s that Nallinger’s department offered a progressive approach to new chassis design: Independent front suspension was introduced in 1931, joined by the arrival of the huge and magnificent Type 770 Grosser model. To have considered a monstrous indulgence like this in the mid-1920s, when both companies were still tottering, would have been unthinkable; in the calmer and more stable atmosphere at Untertürkheim, it seemed entirely logical.
An incredibly skilled, dedicated and capable team of designers, engineers and development technicians helped Mercedes-Benz transform from merely surviving to becoming the most influential of all German carmakers, as well as evolving a series of single-seater racecars that not only won Grands Prix around the world, but set a series of high-speed record runs that no rival could match.
In the watershed years of the 1930s, the production car arm of the flourishing company was equally successful. With Nallinger in charge of the firm’s test and experimental departments, Mercedes-Benz remade itself, developing a series of advanced models that set unprecedented high standards for the rest of the automotive industry. Not only did the 770 Grosser have a massive and ambitiously detailed 7.7-liter 8-cylinder engine, but supercharging, vacuum servo brakes and a 6-speed transmission as well. After the Grosser came the all-new Type 170 with independent suspension, followed by the 200 derivative in 1932 and the 290 a year later. These three inexpensive models were highly successful with 13,775 170s, 15,622 200s, and 7,495 290s sold.
But that wasn’t all. Nibel and Nallinger’s teams – even after Nibel’s sudden death in 1934 –developed the innovative if ultimately unsuccessful rear-engine 130H and the striking high-speed flagship models – 380K/500K/540K – all built around a new family of supercharged 8-cylinder engines, all offering startlingly attractive coachwork and all faster than almost any other road car in the world. These cars were developed with an eye to rapid transport along Germany’s new Autobahnen, and were powerful examples Germany’s new self-confidence.
Advertisement, Mercedes-Benz 170, 1931
Mercedes-Benz 230 Sedan, 1936
Rear-engined Mercedes-Benz 170H, 1936
Mercedes-Benz 500K Cabriolet, 1934
Rolling chassis, Mercedes-Benz T80 speed-record car, 1939
Mercedes-Benz W25 racecar, 1934; Mercedes-Benz 12-cylinder W125 speed-record car, 1938
King of ‘large engines’
This was the time when Nallinger became even more famous and pivotal to Mercedes-Benz top management, and the technical team in particular; the company removed him from work on private cars and set him up to run an entire section of the company that was concerned with the evolution of what it called “large engines” – which included work on massive Vee-12 aero engines, power units for marine and railcar applications, and other engines for military use.
From that moment and until after War II, he really dropped out of the public eye; within the increasingly high walls of Untertürkheim, he grew in influence. Along the way, he was promoted yet again and became a full board member of Daimler-Benz in 1941. Among his major concerns was the building of a new factory to assemble DB 601 aero engines of the type used in the legendary Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter, and to advise on the ways and means of building some of the tanks that made the German blitzkrieg methods so effective in the 1940s. It was this sort of activity that enabled him to work in and around Stuttgart until the fighting – and the destruction – was finally over in 1945.
Although no longer directly involved in motor racing, it was Nallinger who teamed with the promising young engineer, Rudolf Uhlenhaut, in 1936, to establish the specs of the stupendous W125 GP car. When the company was persuaded to start work on the ambitious Type 80 land-speed-record contender, it was Nallinger’s engineers who rushed to finalize the DB 603 version of the aero engine, a water-cooled 44-liter inverted Vee-12, which – it was hoped – would produce up to 3,000 brake horsepower and propel the Type 80 to speeds of more than 400 mph.
DB 603 1,800-horsepower aero engine, 1944
Postwar period
Following WWII, Nallinger had to operate in a very modest manner, not only because his company had virtually been bombed to destruction, but because the postwar occupying forces (the French in this part of Germany) were determined to keep this segment of the defeated nation’s industry rigidly under their control. Accordingly, as there would be no scope for any new military equipment to be designed and manufactured, Nallinger was effectively out of work. Thus, it was not until 1948 that he was allowed to resume his duties as a full board member – as the technical supremo of the fast-recovering Daimler-Benz AG organization.
Not that Nallinger had been idle: While Mercedes-Benz was gradually re-creating itself – first by building postwar versions of the 170V – his engineering team, now with Hans Scherenberg as an increasingly important colleague and Uhlenhaut looking after new-car development, was beavering away on the first truly postwar cars, the W186 models, more familiarly known as the 300s.
In later years, it became clear that the W186 had been Nallinger’s pet project, to the virtual exclusion of everything; it seemed as if all his pent-up energies – first stifled by his work on military projects, then by bureaucratic interference from the French – went into this enterprise. Not only that, but when the time came to develop the charismatic Gullwing 300SL, it was apparently Nallinger who looked carefully at what Jaguar had already achieved with the XK120C racecar, recommending that the same basic approach – using much-modified versions of a production car – should form its heart. It was he, therefore, who encouraged the team to produce what became a sensational competition car; a sensational road car followed.
At the European Grand Prix, Nürburgring, July 1954, head engineer Rudolf Uhlenhaut (left) and technical director Fritz Nallinger share a lighthearted moment in front of the new W196R single seater. Juan Manuel Fangio piloted his W196R, start No. 18, to overall victory.
With pen in hand, a seated Nallinger reviews design sketches; Friedrich Geiger – lead designer for both the prewar 540K and postwar 300SL – stands behind him, early 1960s
Master of all
Nallinger continued to be at the absolute pinnacle of his technical career during the next 15 years – overseeing a larger and ever more resourceful design and development team – he remained the master of all he surveyed, the leader of the orchestra. And yet, he sometimes seemed to be the most practical and enthusiastic of all his colleagues, with interest – and input – into almost everything.
When the time came for an all-new sedan range to be developed, now known as the much-loved Ponton, it was Nallinger who signed off on the costly implementation of the new car’s unit-body construction. By the same token, when Alfred Neubauer proposed bringing Mercedes-Benz back into Grand Prix racing, it was Nallinger who finally agreed that it would not be sensible to update the 1939 Type W165, but that a totally new pair of cars – the W196 single-seater and the 300SLR racing sports car – should be developed instead.
Although Nallinger was by no means a dictator, he seemed to make all the important technical and sporting decisions of the period. For instance, he was the single person to order an immediate withdrawal of cars from the Le Mans race of 1955 following the horrid accident, and it was Nallinger who personally ordered Neubauer to close the entire operation after the Targa Florio race that followed later in the year. And he was right, of course.
By the 1950s, Fritz Nallinger was technical director of Daimler-Benz AG, with overall responsibility for the design, testing and development of all vehicle lines. Plan view and cockpit rendering of a 300SL Gullwing Coupe, 1954.
Mercedes-Benz Pontons, 190SL and 300SL Coupe – all overseen by Nallinger – drive through the Sindelfingen factory gates, 1955
An unmatched record
In the late 1950s and early ’60s, Nallinger, in effect, became the revered elder statesman of a still fast-expanding concern. It was on his watch that fuel injection became more widely used in Mercedes-Benz cars. Work had already begun on the first of the “New Generation” models, the first Mercedes-Benz models to abandon swing-axle rear suspension, and on the innovative Wankel-engined C111 project, when Nallinger finally retired.
In 1965, when he finally handed over the technical reins to Scherenberg, Nallinger had more than 300 patents listed in his name and had completed an amazing 43 years of service to Mercedes-Benz. It was a record which no one seemed likely to match in future years – and no one ever has.