Maybach - history of brand

Makers of Lightweight, Compact and Powerful Engines Since the Days of the Zeppelin

When it comes to power density, compactness and technological sophistication, MTU diesel engines are the world leaders. Which is why people are always interested to know how MTU attained its position of ascendancy. The decisive factor in the process was the airships built by Count Zeppelin. When the first airship took off from the bay of Friedrichshafen-Manzell on 2 July 1900, two 16-horsepower Daimler diesel engines provided the motive power.

Nine years later, Count Zeppelin commissioned the young Karl Maybach to build him some lightweight, powerful and safe gasoline engines for airships. Within a very short space of time, they had proved themselves so reliable that all 112 airships built in Friedrichshafen until 1928 were equipped with Maybach engines.

Spectacular successes were achieved by the reparations airship "ZR III", which completed a transatlantic flight in 1923, and by the "Graf Zeppelin", which circumnavigated the globe in 1929 and crossed the North Pole in 1931.

The last two airships built in Germany, the "Hindenburg" and the "Graf Zeppelin II", went back to using Daimler-Benz engines. They were each powered by four 1200-bhp LOF 6 diesel engines. This was the engine design from which Daimler-Benz developed the MB 518 which subsequently became the standard power unit for patrol boats used by the German and other Western navies. That engine continued to be built by MTU under the designation 672 until the mid-Seventies.

© MTU-Friedrichshafen