M11

The Stuttgart 200 was short of power, so in 1929 Nibel gave the same body and chassis a larger six — 2,581 cc, 50 PS at 3,400 rpm — and sold it as the 10/50 PS Typ Stuttgart 260. Nothing about the engine was adventurous: side valves, one camshaft in the block driven by spur gears, a Solex flat-stream carburetor, 90 km/h. What mattered was the timing. German car sales were collapsing, and in 1929 the two Stuttgarts accounted for some two-thirds of Daimler-Benz passenger-car output.

The same engine then went to work elsewhere. Beyond 6,757 saloons and cabriolets came 50 long-wheelbase Pullmans and 1,507 Kübelwagen built for the Reichswehr. From 1929 it also powered the L 1000 Express, a light commercial on the Stuttgart’s running gear — flatbed, box van, ambulance and ten-seat bus — geared at 7.25:1 for a 60 km/h maximum, of which 2,376 were built. The saloon it was designed for was replaced by the W 21 in 1933; the van outlasted it by three years.