VINTAGE SMOKE

SPECIAL THANKS TO DEUTZ AG AND CLARKE ANDREWS

DEUTZ AIR COOLED DIESELS

If you ask average American diesel enthusiasts about Deutz diesels, they’ll reply, “Yeah, those German air-cooled jobs.” Deutz air-cooled diesels held a sizable commercial market share here from the early 1960s until emissions requirements regulated most of them out of the market in the 2000s.

The Deutz DNA goes back to the beginning of internal combustion. Founder Nicolaus Otto began working on a variation of the compressed-charge, four-stroke internal combustion engine in 1861. In 1864, he teamed up with money man Eugen Langen and formed NA Otto & Cie in Cologne, Germany. In 1876, Otto patented a compressed-charge, four-stroke cycle internal combustion engine (hence the term “Otto cycle” for four-stroke engines). Theirs was the first company formed solely to design and build internal combustion engines. Otto’s four-stroke patent was challenged in 1886 and nullified because of an obscure French patent from more than 20 years before. As a result, the Otto cycle was clear for others to develop. Good for the world but bad for Otto and company.

By 1898, when their first diesels were in the picture, the Otto company had relocated to the Cologne suburb of Deutz and was now known as Gasmotoren-fabrik Deutz. By 1927, they had introduced a modern water-cooled diesel tractor. By 1938, the firm had become Klöckner-humboldt-deutz (Khd)—the name it would keep into the 1990s.

Development of the Air-cooled Diesel

When Germany began militarizing for World War II, KHD was contracted to build just about everything, including artillery, engines, and vehicle parts. In 1942, they were tasked with developing a lightweight, air-cooled diesel for installation into trucks and military vehicles. They built two prototype engines: a

The company had just transitioned to Gasmotoren-fabrik Deutz when this experimental diesel was built in 1898. It was the first diesel engine for the company and the first cross head diesel, meaning it had a multisection connecting rod. This system would be used in many large diesels for decades to come. Deutz AG

Otto’s 1876 four-stroke experimental engine. It made a whopping 3 hp at 180 rpm. This engine still exists, still runs, and can be viewed at the Deutz Museum in Cologne, Germany. Deutz AG

The earliest Deutz air-cooled engines were built for the German military. This 1944 engine made 75 hp at 2300 rpm and only about 1,000 were made before Allied bombing took out enough Deutz infrastructure to make further production impossible. Deutz AG