OM906

Daimler-Benz completed the 900 series in 1998 by adding two cylinders to the OM 904 LA: same 102 × 130 mm bore and stroke, 6.4 liters, the same three-valve heads and solenoid-controlled unit-pump injection under electronic management. What the extra pair bought was reach — up to 205 kW at 2,300 rpm and 1,100 N·m at 1,300 rpm, figures that had until then belonged to engines of significantly greater displacement. The point of the whole family was to make a medium-duty truck engine behave like a heavy one without weighing like one.

It went into the Atego and Axor, into the Econic refuse chassis and the Unimog U 400 and U 500, and was reworked as the horizontal OM 906 hLA for the Citaro city bus. Interest from outside the group came quickly: crane carriers, snow groomers and agricultural machinery took it, Freightliner sold it in North America as the MBE900, and Mitsubishi Fuso used it as the 6S20 in the FJ, itself a rebadged Axor built by BharatBenz in India. Mannheim built it throughout, until the Euro VI OM 936 took over the role in the middle of the 2010s.