.

The factory that was to be the bodybuilding arm of the Daimler-Benz concern was built during the First World War to provide the German air force with another source of aircraft. Following the outbreak of the war, in 1914, the Unterturkheim factory could not meet the increased demand for military aircraft, so Daimler-Motoren had to expand. The war ministry wanted the company to build its new factory near Berlin, but the company refused, as it wished the new factory to be near Stuttgart. In the middle of 1915, there-fore, the ministry turned to the military authorities in Stuttgart and ordered them to find a site that Daimler-Motoren could accept. For obvious reasons, the ministry wanted the new factory to be near an air-field, and the choice was Sindelfingen, which is 15 km south-west of Stuttgart, near Boblingen airfield. Daimler-Motoren agreed to the choice and bought a large tract of land, about twice the area of the UntertOrkheim factory. Con-struction started immediately, and by the end of 1915, production had, to some extent, got under way. Strangely enough, the formal purchase contract between Daimler-Motoren and Sindelfingen local authorities was not signed until 1917, the same year in which the 70-m high factory chimney—familiar from many photographs—was erected. When hostilities ceased, there were about 5,600 people working at Sindelfingen, building mainly aircraft. The following year, 1919, was a troubled one in Germany. A near-revolutionary situation developed, with riots, demonstrations, and acts of violence on both sides. Production at the factory, as well as all over the country, was seriously affected, and the well-functioning organization at Sindelfingen, so carefully built up since the beginning, fell apart. By the end of the year, only 1,500 people still had jobs there. Further problems were caused by the Treaty of Versailles, which forbade Germany to pro-duce war materials of any kind, so the management at Sindelfingen had to find alternative production. Among other things they tried was furniture, but this venture was not at all successful. The technical director of the factory at this time was Hanns Klemm, the well-known air-craft designer, and although a number of light, civilian aircraft would continue to be pro-duced for some while, Daimler-Motoren decided that Sindelfingen would, in the future, concentrate on building bodies for the Daimler cars. In the years that followed, the factory ran into a series of crises (this was a general phenomenon in all German industry—the Untertiirkheim plant was also having hard times). In 1922, for instance, a metalworkers' strike paralyzed production for three months. The galloping inflation of the mark was a further problem. However, throughout these trials and tribulations, the company never lost sight of its goal, "Qualitat Ober Alles", and the production was haIlmarked by the stubborn conviction that, in the end, quality would pay off. In 1924, the first assembly line was installed, with the inevitable loss of jobs as a result. This was to be the pattern in the future, too, whenever automation was in-troduced. New jobs were also created, however. For instance, following the merger with Benz & Cie in 1926, bodybuilding for buses also took place in Sindelfingen and many new jobs were thereby created. Hanns Klemm, whose great interest would remain light aircraft, left the company and started his own, to build just light aircraft. In 1927, he moved the production of light air-craft from Sindelfingen to his own factory at BOblingen, leaving Sindelfingen free to con-centrate on bodybuilding, which it would do from then onwards. In late 1927, Josef Bild-stein came from Steyr to manage the factory for five years. After him, Wilhelm Haspel took over. At the end of the 1920s, following on the merger with Benz & Cie, more rationalizations were carried out. New presses were installed, capable of pressing sizes of up to 200x 150 cm, with a pressure of 750 tons (later increased to 1,000 tons). Each press weighed 83 tons and was 8.5 m high. These enormous tools form-pressed the metal sheets into mudguards and the various panels that made up the body. At last it was pos-sible for the company to compete with the foreign body-pressers who, since the end of the war, had dominated the market. Without lower quality, it was now possible to reduce the unit production cost to such an extent that Mercedes-Benz cars were competitively priced in their sector of the market. A further step forward was taken at this time, when spray painting was introduced. Despite the new competitiveness achieved by these ratio-

(right) The main gate of the Sindelfingen plant, in the 1930s.

(below) The administrative building at Sindelfingen.

ta-AKTIENGESELLSCHA WERIC SINDELFINGEN

nalizations, Daimler-Benz AG ran into serious trouble in 1932, as a result of the interna-tional depression. In 1933, however, things improved. The general upswing in the car industry, due to the abolition of registration taxes and the plans for the Autobahn network, resulted in the provision of many more jobs. Twelve hundred people were employed in the beginning of the year, three thousand by the end, and over five thousand by the end of 1934. The sheet-pressing sheds were enlarged that year, and in 1935 the wood sheds had to be extended. Two years later, the new administrative block was ready. It was in front of this building that so many of the cars shown in this book were photographed. Things were beginning to look up for Daimler-Benz, and the supercharged 8-cylinder passenger cars made no little contribution to this. Most of the bodies built by Daimler-Benz for the supercharged 8-cylinder passenger cars were built at Sindelfingen. Mannheim built a few 500 K and 540 K bodies, as well as one Grosser Mercedes body. Many of the NOrburg bodies were built at Mannheim, too, where coachbuilding went on until 1939 (officially—the last bodies were actually built in 1940). Bodies continued to be built at Sindelfingen until 1944, when the factory was bombed. Not only car bodies were produced at Sindelfingen. Lorry cabs were also produced, as well as bodies for buses and special vehicles such as ambulances, mail trucks, and cross-country transporters. Besides this, car bodies for other auto manufacturers were supplied. Between 1931 and 1937, BMW took delivery of about twenty thousand bodies, while Wanderer received a lesser number. Furthermore, bodies and body kits for other Mercedes-Benz models (never the supercharged 8-cylinder cars) were produced for export and assembly in other countries. During the Second World War, tools and parts for aircraft were also made at Sindelfingen. The pervasive car-body style in Germany in the early 1930s was typified by a vertical radiator, vertical windshield, and angular appearance with very few curves. American influence was obvious. Hitherto, when a new model was produced, the chassis and body were usually designed and built separately. The chassis-maker and the bodybuilder were little interested in each other's wares, and this was often painfully obvious in the resulting car model. However, demand for a car in which body and chassis would form a complete unit was growing, so like it or not, the designers had to get together more and more. This demand came, first and foremost, from within the industry. Although aerodynamics and air-resistance studies were in their infancy, it was believed that streamlining of some sort would produce desirable results. However, the car-buying public was set in its ways and did not take easily to drastic changes in a car's appearance. Any change in design would have to be presented cautiously and gradually. The traditional car shape, with a long bonnet and an engine mounted quite far back in the frame, wasted a lot of passenger or luggage space. In this arrangement, the length of the bonnet usually varied in relation to the wheelbase and the height of the windscreen. This was what the public had learned to like, and this was, in the main, what it got. However, there were many in the industry who wanted optimal speed to be the cri-terion for the development of car shapes in the future, and this meant streamlining. A further advantage of the streamlined shape would be, they claimed, that less dust would be thrown up by the passing car. The first careful steps in the direction of streamlining were taken when the radiator grille was sloped backwards and shaped more or less like a wedge. This was no great novelty, however, as Daimler-Motoren had been using this shape since the early days of the century. A further step was taken in the early 1930s, with the rounding-off of angular corners and the sloping of the windscreen. The mud-guards were made to curve more about the wheels and often formed a smoothly shaped unit that ended in the running-board. The advocates of streamlining were not satisfied with these few changes. Interest in wind resistance and its effect began to grow. Experiments carried out in the 1920s by Jaray and Rumpler for the aircraft industry had established the connection between streamlining and speed. In 1932, Maybach produced a streamlined car that was based on Jaray's research, but the public showed little enthusiasm. Not deterred, Maybach produced another streamlined car three years later, but again, it did not meet with public approval. In 1933, the Berlin coachbuilding firm of Erdmann & Rossi exhibited a stream-lined body on a Mercedes-Benz 170 chassis, but Daimler-Benz refused to allow it to carry the three-pointed star, considering that the car would detract from Mercedes-Benz' repu-tation for style and quality. These failures did not deter the friends of streamlining, however, and wind-resistance research went on throughout 1937 and 1938. Kamm and Everling showed, in a compari-son between a normal sedan body and a streamlined body, that the streamlined body had a 30 per cent better acceleration and a 35 per cent lower fuel consumption than did the normal sedan body. On the streamlined body, the spare wheel had been moved to the boot, and the mudguards, running-boards, and headlamps had been built together as a unit. Many people were horrified by these violent changes, and one tyre manufacturer even claimed that the wheels would become overheated if they were covered in by the bodywork! This lack of success on the part of the streamlined car is hardly surprising when one considers the basic conservatism of the car-buying public. The arguments of engineers and technical experts had little effect on car buyers, who simply could not accept the look of the few streamlined car models that were introduced at that time. So even if the idea of streamlining was being accepted slowly by the industry, hardly any manufacturer was willing to get into full-scale production with a streamlined model. And thoSe who did, regretted it. Tooling was too expensive and the risk of public rejection was too great. Chrysler's Airflow was a warning example. It was put into full-scale production shortly after it had been presented to an astonished car world, but despite heavy marketing and advertising, the public refused to take it to its heart, and Chrysler quickly reverted to a more traditional shape for its next models. A number of other streamlined models were introduced in 1936—the Lincoln Zephyr, the Tatra, and the Adler come to mind—but none was commercially successful. It should be remembered, by the way, that "stream-lined" in this context does not necessarily mean the design was based on aerodynamic tests. When it came to body styling, Daimler-Benz was undoubtedly on the side of the con-servative car world, especially when it came to the design of the supercharged 8-cylinder passenger cars. The style of the body and the elegance of its lines were all-important. The long bonnet was strongly favoured. especially when finished in an attractive V-shaped radiator grille protected by a stone-guard that was available in a variety of attractive designs. Of course, Daimler-Benz had great freedom in the matter of styling, because it built its own bodies and was not bound by the press limitations of other suppliers. Elegance at Sindelfingen meant a sweeping body line that fell towards the running-board in a graceful curve and continued unbroken up over the rear wheels. Quality being the keyword of all Mercedes-Benz production, but especially for the supercharged 8-cylinder cars, it was considered more important to have beautifully made hardwood fittings than to improve rear vision. The back seat may have been moved slightly forward in relation to the back axle, but conservatism was still the rule of the day: the spare wheel was most often mounted in a well in the front mudguard, the headlamps were separate, the running-boards were prominent, and the general impression was one of unchanged elegance and dignity. Nevertheless, the designers could not be stopped in their efforts at modernization, and, gradually, the body was becoming a more functional unit. The German car public strongly favoured the cabriolet style, and the best hoods were undoubtedly made in Germany. They had heavy lining and the inner roofs were covered in soft cloth. The only disadvantage was that they were heavy. The Sindelfingen reputation was growing, both nationally and internationally, and when the supercharged 8-cylinder passenger car first made its appearance, it was regarded as the bearer of a tradition of "aggressive styling and Teutonic arrogance", as one foreign journalist wrote, "especially through its V-shaped radiator grille, its long bonnet, its large headlamps, its low windshield, and not least, the two external exhaust pipes". People thought that this was "a masculine approach to styling". At the time, there were three methods of body construction in use: wood, composite wood and steel, and all-steel. The use of an all-steel construction. which provided the safest cars, began to be popular in the 1920s and was fairly common in the 1930s, both in the United States and in Europe, for small and medium-sized cars. (The first all-aluminium bodies had been built in the United States as early as the 1910s and were in use elsewhere by the 1930s.) An important advantage of the all-steel construction was that the painted bodies could be dried at high temperature. At Daimler-Benz, however, the all-steel construction did not find favour. A wooden frame, reinforced with steel profiles and covered in steel plate, was considered a superior construction, especially for the supercharged 8-cylinder cars. But the process of design-ing and making wooden body frames was complex and difficult. At Sindelfingen, the quest for high quality began with the materials. Only the best would do. To excellent materials were added the skill and precision of the fitting, and, finally, the finish. Quality control was intensive. Everything was checked, not just random samples. And customer satisfaction was the over-riding goal: "All customers must be satisfied". To produce a body to these high standards, as many as fifteen trades were involved. Everybody who worked on the bodies was a highly skilled craftsman. This meant a very high unit cost, so the Sindelfingen management had to chase costs all the time. The following six-point strategy was the basis for cutting costs. 1. Parts must travel the shortest possible route during assembly. 2. More mechanization. 3. Stockholding times had to be reduced. 4. Each stage of production had to be organized to obtain optimal efficiency. 5. New machinery must be developed. 6. The different models would be designed so that they could be built with as many identical parts as possible, thus making it necessary to produce longer series of parts. Sindelfingen's faith in quality was to be repaid time and again. After each trade fair or automobile salon, the reactions were overwhelming. A typical example of the press's enthusiasm is the following quotation.

It is difficult to describe the Sindelfingen bodies—they must be seen. Only then can one discover the interplay between colour, form, and execution. The designers have succeeded from the point of view of elegance, beauty, comfort, practicality, and, not least, they have satisfied their customers' wishes about safety.

A body is built The construction department at Sindelfingen was divided into four sections, working with large series of passenger cars, one-off passenger cars, lorry cabs, military vehicles, and buses. In the earliest stages of developing a car model, many rough sketches would be made. One or two of these would be picked out and used as the basis for full construction draw-ings. From these, one-fifth scale wooden models were built, so that the actual shape of the projected model could be examined three-dimensionally. Naturally, as careful pre-paratory work of this kind was expensive, it was more detailed for models that were planned for long series production than for one-off bodies. Besides, series production requires more information on which to base the full production. After the one-fifth scale models had been approved, the experimental department and the research and develop-ment department would get together and build a full-scale prototype on which to test various methods of production and assembly. The importance of these departments is indicated by the fact that the very best craftsmen worked there. With their experience and skill, they could handcraft the most awkward shapes and solve the most difficult technical problems. When the prototype had been produced to everybody's satisfaction, it was sent to the experimental and research and development departments at the plant at Mannheim or Untertiirkheim, whichever was making the actual chassis. When the prototype body was mounted on the chassis, tests were carried out, and various adjustments would be made as a result of these tests. Once the body prototype had received final approval, the planning department would take over. All work in the planning department was followed closely by someone from the construction department, so that there was an active feedback system. A full set of manufacturing instructions was now made out by the planning department. These defined methods, tools, other equipment, assembly details, and everything else that the production department would need to know in order to build the body correctly. Before full-scale series production started, a short series would be made to test the production line. Any adjustment considered necessary would be made at this stage, before the final go-ahead for full-scale production was given. Building a body at Sindelfingen began in the forests, where the finest hardwoods were selected. Beech and ash were used; not for Sindelfingen the inferior spruce or pine accepted by other coachbuilders. And only heartwood, the best part of the log, was used. Roughly sawn planks were delivered from the sawmills to the sheds in the factory. Here, they were sorted and carefully stacked according to type and year of delivery. The shed was big enough to stock enough timber for about a year's production. Here in the shed, a certain amount of natural seasoning took place, as the planks were "stickered- , that is, the layers of planks were separated by strips of dry wood, so that the air could circulate freely about the planks, drying them slowly. A 200-metre long overhead crane made it easy to handle the timber. Before it was taken from the shed to the drying kilns, the timber would be sawn roughly to the required lengths, to save space in the kilns. By using kilns, Daimler-Benz could produce quality seasoned timber in ten days. If seasoned naturally, it would take about twelve years, so the company's investment in the drying kilns was astute, especially if the interest on capital invested in timber over a period of twelve years is taken into account. Sindelfingen consumed about 15,000 cubic metres of choice beech every year. In each of the twelve kilns, ventilation, humidity, and temperature were automatically recorded every hour. This meant that only one man needed to mind the kilns. By the time the timber left the kilns, the air had been changed there innumerable times. The tempe-rature was kept at 100°C, and this was believed to dry the timber from the pith centre outwards, and not vice versa, as happens when the timber dries in the open. For season-

A body is glued and screwed together in the Sindelfingen plant, 1934.

ing to work at this temperature, some natural preseasoning was necessary, and this took place, as already mentioned, in the wood shed prior to transferring the timber to the kilns. Daimler-Benz considered that this method produced seasoned wood of a superior quality to that of timber seasoned naturally for twelve years. When the timber was properly seasoned, it was moved to an area where sawing, planing, and drilling took place. Here, the plank could be bent into the right shape. Here, too, was where the joinery and the glue rooms were. Many of the machines used for these operations had been developed by Daimler-Benz in the special department the company had for such purposes. In another hall, the pressed steel sheets were stamped out by specially designed Daimler-Benz machines. A large mechanical welder was used to weld together the rear and side panels intended for the limousines. Nearby, the saddlers and the upholsterers worked, although there was a special up-holstery section in another area to cater for the more exclusive models. Again, only the best materials were used, and the skill of the craftsmen who worked here can still be admired today on many of the cars that have survived. Assembly took place on the assembly line, which moved at a speed of 5 metres per hour! At appropriate places along the line, the different body parts were delivered. The final part of the assembly consisted of mounting the panels on the wooden frame. Then the body was taken to be cleaned, sanded, and polished. The metalwork on the body was sanded, treated with filler, both by spray-gun and by hand, and polished no less than six times. Each coating had to dry between treatments. The final coating, which was done by hand, filled all the minute cavities left, and any small bumps in the panels were beaten out by hand or by wooden panel-beating hammer. The body was then spray-painted twice with an insulating liquid paste and then covered with a black signal colour. This colour was removed when the body was polished. Any trace of black still there Since 1927, special Daimler-Benz transport lorries had taken the bodies to Mannheim or Untertiirkheim to be mounted on chassis, but some bodies were mounted on their chassis at Sindelfingen. When the body was mounted, the absolutely final polish was given, and the car was taken out for a test drive. All the instruments, and even such accessories as the cigarette lighter, were tested and approved. Afterwards, the master painter went over the coachwork to check for paintwork damage that might have occurred during assembly and testing. The finished car was then sent over to the exhibi-tion hall to be picked up by the customer or to be transported to him. Records show that the supercharged 8-cylinder passenger cars were not built on the assembly line, but were assembled by hand. The production runs were too short and the fittings and accessories varied considerably, even for cars in the same production run. Most of the chassis for the bigger models, built at UntertOrkheim, were sent to Sindel-fingen to get their bodies. Each body type available from Daimler-Benz was given a specific name in German, and these names will be used, as consistently as possible, throughout the book. This can only be done as consistently as possible, because Daimler-Benz itself was guilty of a number of inconsistencies that result now and then in a question mark about the actual body type being referred to. This inconsistency can be seen in the following list of body types that are covered in this book. 1. Limousine (also called lnnensteuer-Limousine, or Innenlenker—what we would call "saloon" in English) 2. Pullman-Limousine 3. Coupe 4. Kombinations-Coupe 5. Autobahn-Kurier (also called Stromlinien-Limousine) 6. Normal-Roadster (sometimes called Sport-Roadster); this is the one with the flat windscreen 7. Spezial-Roadster (to confuse things, this was also called a Sport-Roadster, but it can be distinguished from the Normal-Roadster because it had a divided windscreen) 8. Offener Tourenwagen (what we call in English "open tourer", or "phaeton" 9. The various cabriolets, as given in the following table:

Sometimes, Cabriolet F was called Pullman-Cabriolet, Transformations-Cabriolet, Stadt-Coupe, or Coupe-Cabriolet. Cabriolet F was a very rare bird, and I have only seen it on the 6-cylinder 290 and 320, never on the supercharged 8-cylinder cars. According to some sources, this body type also appeared on the NDrburg cars, but I have found no evidence of this during my research. Apart from the above-mentioned body nomenclature, Daimler-Benz also used such names as Spezial-Coupe, Sports-Coupe, Roadster-Limousine, Sports-Roadster, Sport-Innenlenker, and many others, all to describe bodies for the supercharged 8-cylinder passenger cars. So it is not surprising that there is a lot of confusion when it comes to naming the body types! I have found, for instance, four original Daimler-Benz documents that refer to the 540 K Coupe owned by Eugene Klineburger in the United States. The first calls the car a Spezial-Coupe, the second Roadster-Limousine, the third Sport-Coupe, and the fourth Coupe.

In this book, we use as much as possible the German name for the body type. The use of safety glass in car windows was a much-debated topic in the 1930s. Daimler-Benz had been using safety glass for quite a while, but on 1 October, 1938, Germany passed a law making it obligatory for car manufacturers to have safety glass in all windows that faced the direction of travel. Daimler-Benz used mainly Sigla glass in windscreens and divisional windows, and normal glass or plexiglass was used in the side windows.

Colour schemes Many people have asked what colour schemes the supercharged 8-cylinder cars had, but there were no set colour schemes, due to the fact that the customer could have his car painted in any colour he wanted. In the Daimler-Benz records, there is no list of all the colour schemes provided, but I have gone through hundreds of delivery documents to produce the following list, which must not be regarded as comprehensive, but gives a good idea of the range of colour schemes preferred by those who bought the super-charged 8-cylinder cars. When the colour scheme was to have two tones, it was most usual that the body and the wheels were painted in one tone and the mudguards and sometimes also the upper parts of the body in the other. Chromed rims and spokes were also an alternative available to the customer.

Each colour had its own number code. Of course, today it is impossible for us to say what the exact tones looked like, but the above table gives a good idea of the width of choice available to the customers. Most of the Grosser Mercedes, being ceremonial cars, were painted black, dark blue, or dark blue with black mudguards. Only a few were painted in light colours.

What did a supercharged 8-cylinder Mercedes-Benz cost? The following comparison will leave the reader in no doubt that it was expensive. In 1939 in Sweden, one Grosser Mercedes cost the same as two 540 Ks, or the same as sixteen Ford V-8s or thirty-two of the cheapest DKWs! The prices we give below are taken from contemporary catalogues, and they vary a bit depending on who the agent was. Prices are given in German marks (RM)

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