MB820

It was built on the bones of the pre-war MB 806, the twelve that had driven Reichsbahn express railcars, and reached the market in the early 1950s exactly as the Deutsche Bundesbahn was deciding how to replace the steam locomotive. Its most public job was the V 200, which carried two. The specification was written for interchangeability: Mercedes-Benz, Maybach and MAN engines and Voith and Mekydro transmissions could all be swapped between the V 200, the V 80, the V 100 and the VT 08, VT 11 and VT 12 railcars, and a locomotive running one Mercedes engine and one Maybach was an ordinary sight.

Water came next. The German sea-rescue service put a 1,350 PS MB 820 DB at the center of its 26-meter Georg Breusing-class cruisers, flanked by two smaller six-cylinder MB 836s, and a diesel-electric installation drove the 6,400-tonne freighter Tinnum in 1959. The naval career was stranger still: the salvaged Type XXIII boats Hai and Hecht, the raised Type XXI Wilhelm Bauer, then every Type 201 and Type 205 submarine of the new Bundesmarine and Norway's Kobben class. Production moved to Maybach at Friedrichshafen from September 1961, and MTU went on selling it as the 12 V 493.