OM49

In 1939 the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe asked Daimler-Benz for a forward-control bus. The chassis came from the N 56 series, by then sold as the O 10000, and the driver was moved forward to sit beside the engine rather than behind it. That engine was the OM 49: a six-cylinder prechamber diesel of 130 mm bore and 180 mm stroke, 14.3 liters, rated at 200 hp at 1,800 rpm. Nothing larger had gone into a Daimler-Benz road vehicle as a straight six; the pre-war heavy diesels had until then topped out around 12.5 liters.

The bus stayed a single vehicle. Truck production in the N 56 series stopped at the end of 1939 and the bus chassis followed in 1941. The eight forward-control trolleybus chassis Berlin did receive in 1941 were conventional O 10000s with welded steel bodies, and a further fifteen ordered with Schumann coachwork were not delivered until 1945–47. Beyond its dimensions and that one commission the OM 49 has left almost nothing behind: no production run, no successor, no second customer.