OM632

Daimler-Benz also listed it as the OM 636/2, and the alternative name is the whole design brief: two cylinders of the four-cylinder OM636, on the same 75 × 100 mm bore and stroke, for 833 cc and somewhere between 17 and 20 PS depending on rated speed. Around three quarters of the parts interchange with the four. Pre-chamber injection, water cooling, a Bosch inline pump, and the entire fuel system arranged down one flank so a fitter could reach all of it. Assembly was at Düsseldorf.

Its market was freight that had to stay cold. Daimler-Benz pitched it squarely at the refrigerated containers then multiplying across rail, road, inland waterway and sea: a small box needed only modest cooling capacity, but a long sea passage needed a prime mover that would not stop, and the company claimed the two would last as long as the four. Generating sets, boats and transport refrigeration units took the rest. The OM636 became one of the most widely built diesels in Europe; its two-cylinder sibling stayed a specializt's engine.