|
Price |
|
-- |
Production |
|
-- |
|
Engine |
11.1
liter OHC inline-6 |
Weight |
-- |
|
Aspiration |
natural |
Torque |
-- |
|
HP |
120
hp @ 1500 rpm |
HP/Weight |
-- |
|
HP/Liter |
10.8
hp per liter |
1/4 mile |
-- |
|
0-62 mph |
-- |
Top Speed |
-- |
(from Daimler Press
Release) 120 hp Mercedes of 1906: One of the last original
designs by Wilhelm Maybach
Two historical racing
cars from the collection of the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart
will be participating in the 2008 Goodwood Festival of Speed. The
120 hp Mercedes manufactured by Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG)
was one of the last original designs by Wilhelm Maybach. And the 120
hp Benz from Benz & Cie. competed in the French Grand Prix in Dieppe
exactly 100 years ago.
For the 1906 racing
season, DMG for the first time developed a racing car with
six-cylinder engine. Wilhelm Maybach had designed this engine – a
highly progressive unit at the time – as early as the fall of 1905
with overhead camshaft, overhead valves and double high-voltage
spark-plug ignition. The individual steel cylinders are mounted on
the light-alloy crankcase. Cooling jackets and cylinder head are
made of a single casting and welded to the steel cylinders. This
design served as a model for top-performance engines for decades to
come. From a total displacement of 11.1 liters, the six-cylinder
generates 106 hp (78 kW) at 1400/min and 120 hp (88 kW) at 1500/min
– never before had such high engine speeds been achieved in engine
manufacture, the result of Maybach’s endeavor to keep the moved
masses in the valve timing gear as small as possible.
Ironically, a dispute
arose at DMG over the modern design in that several technical
details did not meet with the approval of the management, the
supervisory board and the company’s most important and highly
influential customer, Emil Jellinek. In addition to Maybach being
discredited, the internal strife had the consequence that no
sufficiently tested six-cylinder car was available for the first
French Grand Prix in June 1906. Instead, the company entered three
versions of the 120 hp Mercedes of 1905, with four-cylinder engines
specially modified for this race.
The 120 hp Mercedes
presented by Mercedes-Benz in Goodwood dates back to the year 1906
and forms part of the collection of the company’s museum. It hasn’t
been operated in public for a long time – since its entry in the
Semmering hillclimb race in 1908, it has above all been used as a
static exhibit. Now the car is presented to the public again – and
used for its original purpose, namely for racing. This is Goodwood,
after all, were the racing atmosphere of bygone times is revived.
Technical data
