A Surprise at the Mercedes-Benz Museum
The Mercedes Benz Museum collection span the complete history of the automobile, which is impressive in itself, but one oddity from the 1930s piqued our interest.
When we visited the Mercedes-Benz Museum in 1980, the number of historically significant cars stored in that building was staggering. However, also included were oddities and cars that did not quite make it to production or which were sales failures. Lydia and I were particularly intrigued when we saw two such vehicles from the 1930s, both small rear-engine cars. One in particular looked roughly like a VW Beetle but with Mercedes-Benz level of quality materials and finish. They were much more compact than the other displayed cars of that era and the absence of the company’s imposing chrome radiator made these little cars look out of place with their unadorned sloping frunk lids.
These two Mercedes-Benz cars stood out as outliers and we wondered whether they were related to the VW which was being developed during that same period. Why would Mercedes introduce a compact rear-engine car when in the 1930s their cars were large, majestic and the pinnacle of high-speed luxurious motoring? Let us begin by looking more closely at the two cars we saw that afternoon.
Mercedes-Benz 130 H (W23)
Launched in 1934, the 130 H was realized by legendary Daimler Benz engineer Hans Nibel. He had served as chief engineer with Benz & Cie until 1926 when his company merged with Daimler whose chief engineer happened to be none other than Ferdinand Porsche, the architect of the VW. They apparently shared chief engineering duties from 1924 to 1929 at which time Porsche left Daimler Benz for NSU and then in 1931 formed his own consultancy. Who of these two held a more senior position in the boardroom is a popular topic of conjecture among automotive historians, but not relevant to today’s topic.
What is undisputed though is that the 130 H was Nibel’s project. Where did he come up with the idea for this car? It is generally accepted in the literature that the design concept of his rear-engine car was first conceived in 1925 by Daimler designer Bela Barenyl but never taken beyond the drafting stage. It is important to note that Ferdinand Porsche served as Daimler Chief Engineer from 1923 to 1928, and may or may not have had a hand in some elements of these drawings, but at the very least he examined and commented on the concept, given his reputation for being very detail oriented.
Mercedes-Benz 150 R Sports (W30)
The very futuristic looking 150 was a two-seater roadster version of the 130 H, fitted with a larger engine. Intended as a race car, it never evolved beyond the prototype phase. Sitting there in the museum, it was quite an unusual but impressive sight to behold in bright red.
Mercedes-Benz 170 H
It should be noted that a version of the 170, a popular compact but conventional front-engine car, was also offered in rear engine configuration from 1936 to 1939. It was not displayed in the museum during our 1980 visit.
Ferdinand Porsche and the VW
After leaving Daimler Benz, one of Ferdinand Porsche’s early projects was a rear-engine car for NSU. Production of the Porsche designed-NSU Volksauto began in 1933, proving he had designed at least one vehicle of this type before embarking on the Beetle project. After being approached, more likely summoned, by Adolf Hitler following the 1933 Berlin Auto Show to discuss the development of a people’s car in accordance with Hitler’s own brief, the Porsche firm was hired to take on the project. The NSU design Porsche had developed was used as the basis for the development of the new people’s car. The real question here is what influenced him other than his NSU and the rear engine Mercedes drawings he had been exposed to?
There was a lot going on at the time and other rear engine projects were also in the works by multiple German manufacturers. They had to have influenced Ferdinand Porsche.
Hitler regularly spoke publicly about his vision of an affordable, fast, roomy and easy-to-maintain vehicle for the German people. He was specific about its price-point as well. In response to his interest, some German automobile manufacturers ran the numbers and concluded no auto maker could produce a vehicle meeting Hitler’s requirements at the price he specified. Notwithstanding the accountants’ warnings, a few companies decided to jump on the bandwagon with their own designs assuming, even though they would produce a more expensive vehicle, their models could win what they thought was an informal open competition.
It was not an open competition. Opel introduced a model that was their version of the people’s car and Mercedes-Benz produced the aforementioned 130 H. It quickly became obvious to the German automotive industry that something was amiss with the invitation when in late 1937 Mercedes-Benz was ordered by the Nazi government to produce a run of thirty Porsche designed prototype VWs used to beta-test the Hitler backed car. Randomly selected stormtroopers were then recruited to test them for an extended period by driving them vigorously, which I am sure they did.
Development of the VW was being supported financially by the government and the idea of a competition was squelched when steel supplies, controlled by the Reich, were withheld from Opel’s version of the people’s car. That rather blunt message from the Chancellery discouraged not only private sector interest in the people’s car, but the whole idea of a rear-engine car.
Based on the Opel experience, the message must have been clear at Adler, Mercedes and NSU that there would be one design for the Volkswagen and I suspect that the Mercedes-Benz 130 H, 150 Sport Roadster and 170 H also received luke-warm support from the company, when it realized the writing was on the wall that the VW was the chosen one and their models had no future. The 130 H and 170 H cars sold poorly and are footnotes in the company’s history with no antecedents or successors. The 1970s era book, Three-Pointed Star, an often-quoted history of the Mercedes-Benz marque, makes no mention at all of any of these vehicles.
There is another interesting question about these cars. Why suddenly introduce a rear engine car to the MB lineup in the first place? Rear engine cars were not a new idea. After all, the very first usable car developed by Carl Benz in 1886 had its engine behind the driver. Most cars that followed retained that format until 1891 when, among many other innovations, French automotive engineer, race driver and co-founder of car company Panard et Levassor, Emile Levassor created the car layout as we know it today by placing the radiator, then the engine in the front followed by the transmission transferring power back to the rear wheels. That configuration certainly took hold and continues to dominate motorized mobility to this day.
Why then would Ferdinand Porsche revisit the rear engine layout? Popular VW culture likes to promote the idea that the Beetle’s layout was an original concept that came out of Ferdinand Porsche’s brilliant mind in a eureka moment. In fact, rear engine cars were already on the roads of Europe when he was working on the VW and these cars were influencing innovative car designers when Porsche and his associates undertook their rear-engine projects. In addition to the NSU he had developed, three models were well known and respected by the engineering community.
Tatra 97
The Czechoslovakian Tetra 97 (1936 to 1939), is regularly identified as the genesis for the VW. It was built a lot like a Beetle with its centre-spine chassis, flat-four air-cooled engine and there was more than a passing resemblance in their body work. But wait, the Tetra also has an uncanny resemblance to those 1920s Mercedes-Benz design drawings by Bela Barenyl, the very same design that Hans Nibel had access to when he worked on the MB 130H.
Rumpler Tropfenwagen
Edmund Rumpler, Austrian automobile and aeronautical engineer introduced his Tropfenwagen model at the 1921 Berlin car show. Calling this car unique does not do it justice. Rumpler stated himself that its shape was inspired by the gondola of a zeppelin and more than one observer noted that from above it looks like a fish. Although technically a mid-engine layout, its innovative aerodynamics, chassis and suspension inspired Hans Nibel in the 1920s to design one of the earliest mid-engine race car configurations for Benz.
Adler Maikäfer
Josef Ganz was an independent engineer who designed a rear engine model in 1931 for Adler motors, a manufacturer of motorcycles and compact cars. Many attribute the Maikafer (May Beetle in English) as the template for the VW.
In Conclusion
The Mercedes-Benz 130 H and 150 we saw at the museum were two well executed vehicles that were compact and looked pretty modern sitting among the other cars on display from the 1930s, an era of sweeping fenders, long rectangular engine cowlings and massive chrome radiators. These two cars as well as rear engine cars from other manufacturers deserved a chance. I suspect that the politics associated with the peoples’ car discouraged Mercedes-Benz and others from pursuing rear-engine configurations. Adolf Hitler was personally committed to the project and getting in the way of a dangerously temperamental autocrat was risky business for any German automobile company in that environment.
We ended up after WW II with the Beetle, arguably the most successful car in history and the car that served as the template for the first Porsche sports car, surely the most successful sports car company. One wonders if even the grandiosely delusional Adolf Hitler could have imagined the impact his pushing for the people’s car would have on the future of the automobile.
Selected Research Sources:
Three-Pointed Star: The Story of Mercedes-Benz; David Scott-Moncrieff, Gentry Books, 1979
We at Porsche: The Autobiography of Dr. Ing. h.c. Ferry Porsche; Ferry Porsche and John Bentley, Doubleday and Company, 1976
Volkswagen Nine Lives Later; Dan R. Post, Motor-Era Books, 1982
Thanks for all the research.
Kind supports the old saying “ There is nothing new”, including automotive design and politics of psychopathic leaders.