OM444

Twelve cylinders were the end of the line for Daimler-Benz’s 90° V-family, and by the OM 44x generation of the late 1980s the twelve had stopped pretending to be a lorry engine. Naturally aspirated it made 553 hp; turbocharged, 674; turbocharged and intercooled, 830 hp with 3,200 N·m, for which the compression ratio had to come down to 14.5:1. The bare engine weighed 1,216 kg. Even the exhaust brake was worth around 200 kW with the throttle valve fitted, which says something about the loads it was expected to hold back.

Its customers were crane builders, contractors and generating-set assemblers. It turns up in Liebherr LHM mobile harbour cranes, in asphalt pavers, in self-propelled forage harvesters and in standby power plant, and its large displacement and low operating temperatures made it a favorite in hot climates. Sales for anything other than a Mercedes-Benz vehicle ran through MTU from 1988 as part of the Series 183. Versions were still being certified to Euro II and then Euro III into the mid-2000s, long after the truck engines beside it had gone.