OM423

When the OM 42x generation arrived in 1980 the turbocharged V8s were held back for road vehicles, and construction trucks could not be specified with them at all. For that work the top engine was this: an 18.3-liter naturally aspirated V10 of 355 PS, doing with displacement what the road trucks were doing with boost pressure. It was, in effect, the reason Daimler-Benz still had any use for a ten-cylinder once forced induction had become respectable — a way of selling 350-odd PS to a customer the turbo was not yet trusted with.

Then in 1984 it got the turbocharger and intercooler after all, and the OM 423 LA leapt from 355 to 500 PS, enough for the three-axle 3850 AS tractor. Higher settings followed — 545 PS, and 700 PS for airfield crash tenders, which need everything at once for a few minutes and then nothing for a year. Production ran to 1994, by then certified to Euro I, and the engine carried over into the Schwere Klasse range that succeeded the New Generation in 1988. Under MTU it lived on as part of Series 183.