M19

By 1932 the Mannheim range was aging and its 3.7-liter six had nothing left to give. Daimler-Benz answered with an eight: 3,823 cc from a long-stroke 78 × 100 mm, side valves, one camshaft in the block, 80 PS at 3,200 rpm and 120 km/h from a car weighing well over 1,800 kg. Sold as the 15/80 PS, it turned the Mannheim 380 S into the largest thing on the price list below the Nürburg and the Grosser, and it was already a generation behind the overhead-valve engines of the SS and SSK it was meant to succeed commercially.

The more interesting car came at the end of the run. The same engine, compression raised for 85 PS, went into a chassis with a coil-sprung swing axle at the rear and a transverse leaf spring in front — Nibel and Wagner’s independent suspension, different enough from the Mannheim beneath it that the works assigned a separate number, W 19. Sold as the 15/85 PS in 1932 and 1933, it was in effect a running prototype for the Typ 380 that followed. That car received a redesigned overhead-valve eight, and the side-valve M 19 was finished.