M118

Fritz Nallinger never let go of the idea of a Mercedes below the existing range. Around 1960 the advance development department at Untertürkheim, under Ludwig Kraus, drew a front-wheel-drive compact — project W118, planned with a 1.5-liter flat-four. Alongside it Daimler-Benz tested a high-compression 1.7-liter inline-four, and the car became the W119. In-house the engine was the H-Motor: Heron combustion chambers, helical intake ports to swirl the mixture, and 11.2:1 compression at a time when nine was ambitious. The prototypes wore an SL face and a low waistline close to the coming 230 SL.

Daimler-Benz had taken control of Auto Union in 1958, and a small Mercedes would have eaten DKW’s market. The car was canceled. In 1962 Nallinger sent Kraus to Ingolstadt instead, carrying the engine — codenamed Mexico, originally worked up as a multi-fuel unit for a military program that came to nothing — to cure Auto Union of two-strokes. Kraus put it in the DKW F102, and since DKW meant two-strokes the result appeared in 1965 under a name unused since 1940: Audi. Nallinger’s compact Mercedes finally arrived in 1982, as the W201.