M150

The W 150 was the surprise of the Daimler-Benz stand at the 1938 Berlin show, developed under Max Sailer by chief designer Max Wagner — who had come to Untertürkheim from Benz & Cie. with Hans Nibel, and had just finished the chassis of the W 125 and W 154 Silver Arrows. The eight kept the architecture of the W 07 unit before it: a single side camshaft working overhead valves, and two spark plugs per cylinder fired by magneto and battery together. Higher compression and higher revolutions lifted output, and unlike the old car the supercharger was no longer optional.

That mattered because of what it had to move. Six meters long and weighing up to 3.6 tonnes empty, the 770 needed the Roots blower to reach 170 km/h; the armored Sonderausführung ran to 5,420 kg gross, at which point the speed limit dropped to 80 km/h simply to keep tires intact. A five-speed gearbox with overdrive top and a de Dion rear axle completed it. Only 88 were built, half of them in 1939, and the car appeared on no price list — the figure was published as auf Anfrage, on request.