| | High-pressure work on the diesel engine |
One of the pioneers of the diesel engine was Prosper L’Orange, a member of the board of management of Benz & Cie. He headed engine production in Mannheim where, after the expiry of the basic diesel patents in 1907, production of diesel engines was started as early as 1909, though not yet for driving vehicles. In the same year, L’Orange also developed the prechamber diesel engine and obtained a patent for this design.
After the end of World War I, L’Orange resumed development work on the diesel engine and in 1923 Benz installed the first operational diesel engines suitable for road vehicles in five-tonne trucks. The first production diesel engines for vehicles were four-cylinder prechamber engines of the OB 2 type. They generated 45 – 50 hp from a displacement of 8.8 litres. The first tests were successfully completed near Gaggenau on 10 September 1923.
At the 1924 Motor Show in Berlin, three competitors lined up with three different systems – Benz with the prechamber engine, Daimler with compressed-air injection and MAN with direct injection. But it was still several years before the diesel engine became "presentable".
Parallel to the development of the diesel engine, Benz introduced another innovation: a low-frame chassis. Originally designed to facilitate the dustmen's job, the low offset frame section between the axles enhanced the comfort of buses from 1925 – the first step in bus development away from truck design.
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