OM602

The OM602 took over from the OM617 as the five-cylinder of the range, arriving in April 1985 in the W201 190 D 2.5 and the W124 250 D with the iron block, aluminum head, chain drive and hydraulic tappets of its four- and six-cylinder siblings. A turbocharged version followed in January 1987, good for 122 PS in the 190 D 2.5 Turbo — a genuinely quick compact saloon by the standards of compression ignition at the time. Later 2.9-liter versions abandoned the prechamber altogether for direct injection with an electronically controlled rotary pump, which is the form that went into the first Sprinter.

Its second career began on 26 February 1991, when Mercedes-Benz announced a ten-year cooperation agreement with SsangYong in Seoul. The Koreans built the engine as the OM662 family and fitted it to the Musso, the Korando, the Istana and the first Rexton, in some cases as late as 2007. At home it did the heavy work: T1 and Vario vans, the 290 GD and G 290 Geländewagen, and the W210 E 290 Turbodiesel at 129 PS. Like the OM617 before it, individual examples are known to have gone past a million kilometers.