Mercedes-Benz Rear Engine Car
Daimler AG is the world’s oldest carmaker, a producer of upscale high quality cars and trucks with market-leading technology. Although the very first 1885-1886 Daimler and Benz cars had the engines behind the drivers, as did the tiny M-B Smart car introduced in 1998, these could he called aberrations.
From the turn of the twentieth century, when Mercedes established what became the conventional layout of the automobile with a front-mounted engine driving the rear wheels, virtually all of its cars had this traditional configuration. It may be somewhat surprising then that during the 1930s MercedesBenz produced true rear engine cars with the engine behind the rear axle.
It occurred during the worldwide Depression when Mercedes-Benz saw the need for a smaller model low enough in price and operating cost to be affordable by working class people. There was also the reality that a new small, low cost economical “People’s Car” was being planned by the German government. That would ultimately come to fruition and was announced by Adolf Hitler when he became German Chancellor in 1933. He commissioned Ferdinand Porsche’s design office to develop what became the Volkswagen “Beetle.”
To meet these challenges Mercedes-Benz decided on an all-new small car, not a scaled down version of a larger model. In a startling departure from its tradition it decided it would have a rear engine.
There was considerable rear engine interest in Europe at that time led by prominent engineers like Vienna-born Edward Rumpler, Czechoslovakian Hans Ledwinka of Tatra and Ferdinand Porsche of Austria with his midrear engine Auto Union racers and soon to be created rear engine government sponsored Volkswagen Beetle. Porsche’s Beetle and its derivative Porsche car and Ledwinka’s Tatra would use rear engine layouts successfully for many decades. Porsche’s 911 still does.
M-B began work on its rear engine passenger car in the early 1930s (it had built earlier rear engine racers) and experimented with a variety of engine types with both air and water cooling. The design finally emerged early in 1934 as the Mercedes-Benz Type 130H, (H for Heckmotor, or rear engine), a year and a half before the first Volkswagen Beetle prototype. The 130H came as a sedan and convertible with an inline 1.3 litre, 25 horsepower, water cooled, side-valve, four mounted longitudinally behind the rear axle. Top speed was an estimated 92 km/h (56 mph).
The 130H had a tubular back-bone chassis with the body mounted on outriggers. This frame type was not a new concept, having been used by Rumpler, Ledwinka and others, and would be used by Ferdinand Porsche in the Volkswagen and Porsche. The 130H’s suspension was independent on all four wheels via two transverse leaf springs at the front and coil-springs and swing axles at the rear. The three-speed-plus-overdrive transmission was ahead of the axle, and four wheel hydraulic brakes were fitted.
Although the M-B 130H had the expected quality construction, there was no denying that with two-thirds of the weight in the rear and swing axle suspension, its handling had the usual strong rear-engine oversteering tendency. That is the proclivity of the rear end to swing wide in corners that were entered too fast.
If the driver pressed on, the car would eventually overturn, swap ends or land in the ditch. This quirk was criticized by testers but seemed to be more tolerated at that time by the public. It was accepted that motorists would adapt to a car’s idiosyncrasies, and the 130’s four- wheel independent suspension did provide a more comfortable ride than its contemporaries.
The 130’s styling departed from M-B’s traditional tall rectangular grille topped by a three-pointed star. With no front radiator to accommodate, the stylists dispensed with a grille. They rounded the hood Beetle-like down to the bumper and fitted Individual headlights perched between the hood and nicely curved fenders. The rear engine allowed a long enough wheelbase to provide adequate leg room for the four passengers.
The 130H lasted until 1936. At that time M-B introduced two new cars. One was the 150H Sport Roadster, a mid-rear-engine, twoseater roadster with the engine ahead of the axle to alleviate oversteer. Production of the 150H was very limited. There was also the 170H as sedan or convertible, a larger variation of the 130H now powered by a 1.7 litre, 34 horsepower inline four for better performance. Top speed was said to be 112 km/h (70 mph).
The 170H was built until 1939 when the Second World War ended production. Sales of M-B’s rear engine cars were never high, with few motorists willing to accept such a radical departure by Mercedes-Benz. Fortunately examples of all three of these unusual and scarce models have been restored and preserved and are on display in M-B’s museum in Unterturkheim, Stuttgart, Germany.