Yahoo Autos 70 Years Ago Today Daimler-Benz Took over Unimog Production
The Unimog has worked a three-pointed star badge long enough for just about everyone to consider it a Mercedes-Benz design. But that's not the case. Today is the 70th anniversary of Daimler-Benz's purchase of Unimog from Boehringer Brothers.
That's right: the Unimog was initially developed by the small Göppingen-based automaker Boehringer Bros., which first showed the production-ready prototype of the versatile truck at the Deutschen Landwirtschaftsgesellschaft (DLG) show in Frankfurt in 1948.
Of course, the development of Unimog began years before. The roots were planted in the months after the allied victory in Europe, when engineer Albert Friedrich began work on a medium-sized, four-wheeled agricultural tractor that could perform a number of jobs in the field and on the road. The list of goals for this machine, laid out differently from most agricultural tractors of the time, was quite long: it had to be able to carry attached tools on all four sides while also offering four-wheel drive, being able to carry cargo, act as a tractor by pulling a plow and also be able to have a high-enough on-road speed to keep up with city traffic.
Needless to say, there were small trucks at the time that could carry cargo, but most were not four-wheel drive and they certainly could not carry attachable tools on all four sides. Likewise, there were wheeled agricultural tractors that could do some of these tasks, but they couldn't carry cargo without a trailer and were not great to drive on road.
The first prototype sought to do it all, all while featuring a complex suspension with portal axels that made it just as usable as an off-road explorer. The truck acquired the name Unimog from Universal-Motor-Gerät, or universal motorized vehicle, in 1946, and the following year the prototype was first shown to the public. Early prototypes, built by Erhard & Söhne, were powered by M 136 engines, while later prototypes were powered by Daimler's OM 636 diesel engines paired with six-speed gearboxes. Production of the Unimog 70200 by Boehringer Bros. in Göppingen began in 1948 with 600 hundred examples of the 70200 model being produced, with demand quickly outpacing supply.