OM314

Work on the light-lorry engine family had begun around 1938 with a four, the OM 301, and it never left prototype form; everything that reached customers afterwards had six cylinders. Direct injection came first, in the six-cylinder OM 352 of 1964, after more than a decade of experiments with it. A year later the four followed — identical to the OM 352 in every respect but cylinder count, and the first Mercedes-Benz four-cylinder diesel to use direct injection. It was drawn for the new light forward-control lorries with the cubic cab.

The LP 608 it powered was rated at 6.5 tonnes gross, which in Germany meant an ordinary car license was enough to drive it, and one rolled out as the very first vehicle built at the new Wörth plant on 14 July 1965. More than 10,000 sold in two years, for a 45 per cent share of the class. Nobody claimed the engine was smooth — the fours ran coarsely, and that was accepted — but they held together, and so, for the first time in the family, did the turbocharged versions. A thorough revision in 1983 turned it into the OM 364.