OM616

The OM616 was the OM615 opened out — the same 92.4 mm stroke, the bore taken to 91 mm — and it arrived in 1973 as the 240 D of the Stroke Eight. In August 1978 the prechamber was reworked for more swirl and a camshaft with greater valve lift was fitted; capacity fell fractionally, to 2,399 cc, so the engine sat the right side of European displacement tax bands, and power went up rather than down, from 65 to 72 PS. In that form it carried the W123 240 D to 1985 and the 240 GD Geländewagen well beyond.

Its reputation was made by odometers. Gregorios Sachinidis, a taxi driver in Thessaloniki, bought a 1976 240 D showing 220,000 km and ran it round the clock until July 2004, by which point it had covered 4.6 million km — the highest mileage recorded for any Mercedes-Benz, and now an exhibit in the Stuttgart museum. It took three engines and eleven overhauls. The design also outlived Stuttgart's interest in it: Bajaj Tempo, now Force Motors, licensed the OM616 in 1982 and has been building it in India ever since.