(engine roaring)
(speaking foreign language)
- Whether you're driving through a bog,
or over a log, or up a mountain in the fog,
in the mud like a hog, or searching the desert
for your long lost dog.
(engine roaring)
(truck honking)
Whether you need a place to write your mommy blog,
there's one vehicle for you.
I'm talking about the Mercedes that makes the G-Wagon
look like a wee wagon.
This is everything you need to know
to get up to speed on the Unimog,
which is I think German for very, very big car.
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Now despite a formidable road block in its creation,
the Unimog has been around for nearly 75 years.
It was, and still is, one of the hardest core trucks around
and the first one was built by a German metals business
rather than an Audi manufacturer.
In 1945, Germany was coming off of back to back
World War losses.
They were looking to rebrand themselves
as more of an agricultural type of place
and less of a imperial fascist type of place.
I wonder why?
So farmers set to work tending their fields
and yoking their oxen.
This did not go unnoticed by a Daimler Benz AG
aircraft engineer by the name of Albert Friedrich.
Apparently old Al didn't like using beasts of burden
and thought there ox to be a better way.
(crickets chirping)
Albert decided to partner up with a couple
of his engineering homies, Hans Zabel and Heinrich Roessler
to develop the ultimate tractor.
And during a very German bratwurst brainstorming session,
they came up with the fundamentals of the vehicle.
Unlike other tractors ours should
have four equally large wheels so we can drive on the roads.
Yeah and the all wheel drives.
Will you pass the sauerkraut.
(chewing) Yes, of course.
We should have portal axles for the extra ground clearance.
Yeah.
Who knew these bratwursts will give us the bratbest ideas.
(crickets chirping)
With their design concept complete,
they were ready to make a prototype,
so they took all their designs to a company called
Erhard and Sons which was well known
for manufacturing tractors.
And by tractors, of course I mean
they specialized in making jewelry, and door handles,
and doll house furniture.
But apparently that's a lot like making bad (beep) tractor
monster trucks because by 1946,
they had created one of the most capable bad (beep) tractor
monster trucks of all time.
Hans named it the universal motor garat
and they called it the Unimog for short.
The prototype was extraordinarily capable
even with its dinky Mercedes four cylinder gas engine,
but there was one place it was not allowed to go,
and that was to war.
Now Germany was still in the dog house
from all that blitzkrieging they had recently unleashed
on Europe, which is why they weren't allowed
to build new military vehicles.
In fact, Daimler wasn't even allowed
to make plain old four wheel drive vehicles.
They actually had to petition the allies
for permission to make the Unimog.
They promised that they would only use it
for agricultural purposes.
Since Mercedes was in time out and Erhard and Sons
didn't have enough production power
to manufacture the vehicle,
the Unimog turned to tool manufacturer Boehringer.
Now Boehringer hand built the first model,
the Unimog 7200.
Okay.
(upbeat jingle)
I'm used to car names with like one, maybe two,
maybe even three numbers in it.
This car has a lot of models with like five numbers in it.
For instance this one is called the 70200
and I think that's 7200, maybe 70,200
and I'm not quite sure how to say 'em,
so I'm just gonna do my best.
Please be nice to me.
Boehringer built around 600 of these
between 1949 and 1951.
It was just like the prototype,
but relied on a bigger Mercedes diesel engine.
Now Unimogs were utilitarian AF,
with an open cab and flat body panels
to keep things super simple and cheap to make.
And looks didn't matter because it was really only built
to be useful.
They were designed to replace an ox,
which is probably why the badge for the first Unimogs
was a U shaped ox head.
Despite best efforts to keep Germany
from making military vehicles,
the Unimog was a military darling from the beginning.
A duh.
The high demand for the do-it-all vehicle
resulted in Daimler Benz taking over production in 1951.
Seems like this may have been the plan all along.
(engine roaring)
(speaking foreign language)
In 1955 Daimler created the big daddy 404.
Some of the other big developments
were that it could be had with a steel cab
and a straight six gas engine.
It was basically a school bus with insane climbing ability,
a brake over axle, and ramp angle.
(engine roaring)
The 404 is the most iconic Unimog.
The design was so simple and efficient
that Mercedes manufactured them for 25 years.
That's almost as long as Nissan's been making the 370Z
and they are the most successful model
in the name plate's history.
They were used as snow plows, emergency vehicles,
farming tractors, military vehicles,
and coolest of all, trains.
(train tracks rattling)
(train braking)
Choo, choo.
I freakin' love trains.
And that was it for a while.
For the next 20 years, the Unimog just sat back
and rested on its laurels while Daimler
developed new models, like the 406 medium size truck,
they were really just variants of the 404.
Why reinvent the enormous wheel?
(upbeat music)
Now even though Unimog was a tractor,
it looked a lot like a truck,
but it had a common tractor feature
known as power take off or PTO.
To this day the PTO capabilities of the Unimog
help it stand out as the Swiss army knife of off roaders.
PTOs are extra drive shafts
that can be powered directly by the engine
and the uses for them are endless.
You need to put out a fire, cool,
just attach a water pump to the PTO.
You need to till a field, sick, PTO.
Need a snowblower, PTO.
For accessories that weren't PTO friendly,
Unimogs also could be had with built in hydraulic
and pneumatic systems.
The systems became standard in 1963,
which helped drive a market for custom accessories
like bucket loaders, articulating boom lifts,
road maintenance equipment.
In fact they can turn the truck
into any heavy duty construction equipment
you could possibly want.
Not only could the Unimog do a bunch of stuff,
it could also go pretty much everywhere.
The Unimog had incredible ground clearance
thanks to portal axles which are basically gear boxes
that allow the axle to sit several inches higher
than the center of the wheel hub.
It's the equivalent of standing on your tippy toes,
but for off roaders.
Like if you see any of those bro dozers at SEMA,
the opposite of a mall crawler,
it's a freakin' wall crawler.
Now this setup gives the wheels plenty of room
for vertical movement so the vehicle can drive
over extremely uneven terrain,
including three foot tall rocks.
(engine revving)
Which is also the name of me and Nolan's alt country band.
Three Foot Tall Rocks, check us out.
Then in 1975 they finally dropped the heavy duty series
with a 4.5 ton U1300L and 5.5 ton U1700L.
These were the big boy versions
and featured the 5.7 liter in line six diesel engines.
With a 17 offering, your choice of turbo charger,
or super charger for extra mustard.
While having a heavy duty Unimog was important
for obvious reasons, probably the most important thing
about this model is that Arnold freakin' Schwarzenegger
owned one.
Now when Arnie wanted to escape the superficial realm
of Hollywood, he didn't get to the choppa'.
No, he got himself a 1977 1300L Unimog.
And guess what, it made him look small.
And then came the mid 90s,
which saw the creation of the light model 408
and my favorite model the Funmog.
The Funmog was a luxury version of the 408
with chrome everything, leather interior
in a (bleep) sound system.
Oddly though, the Funmog deleted the hydraulic system,
so it was basically a golf cart with crazy ground clearance.
If I had a Funmog man, I'd just drive right up red carpet
at the Oscar's, I'd be like, "Hey, what's up Lindsay Lohan?
"You left all your sunglasses at my house.
"You want 'em back?
"Okay, I'll meet you at the Vanity Fair after party."
(chimes jingling)
Lindsay Lohan, huh?
Yeah man, Lindsay Lohan.
I don't remember her twin sister's name,
but I been a big fan ever since, "The Parent Trap."
And since Mercedes had just made a little Mog,
it only made sense to offset that
with the new massive 6X6 known as the 2450.
I work 2450 baby.
24 hours a day 50 days a year.
Unimogs were always utilitarian, straight forward,
and efficient, but in 2002 after moving production
to their heavy duty truck plant,
they got just a little bit fancier
with the launch of the 3000, 4000, and 5000 series.
Mercedes had to compete with other heavy duty truck
manufacturers like Hino and Kamaz.
Not only do they compete with them for sales
in the commercial and military markets,
they literally compete with them
in the notorious Dakar Rally.
(engine roaring)
(truck honking)
Even though they race, it should be noted
that the highest trim modern Unimog
has a top speed of 56 miles per hour.
Slow speeds are just part of the reason
you don't see celebrities driving 'em around much,
or at all because they aren't legal in the US.
You can get one once they're 25 years old,
but do you have any idea how expensive it is
to maintain an old 14,000 pound Mercedes
in a country that never sold them?
Probably the biggest reason you don't see them
at movie premiers or swanky restaurants
is because they don't belong there.
They were designed to be mechanical oxen
and using them for anything else is a pain in the (beep).
Can you imagine driving this thing up a tight road?
They're freakin' huge.
While the basic principles of the original 1946 Unimog
have stayed the same throughout its history,
technology has definitely helped make it much more capable.
In the process of installing emergency radios
on the second highest volcano in the world in Chile,
a pair of Unimogs just set the record
for reaching the highest altitude a wheeled vehicle
has ever gone, at 21,961 feet.
That's 6,694 meters for our friends
that live anywhere besides the US.
Whether it's self inflating tires, special rock crawling
gearing, or a steering wheel that can be moved
from the right to left hand drive,
with the push of a lever,
Unimogs are still one of the most versatile vehicles
ever created to go anywhere and do anything.
Thank you guys so much for watching Up to Speed
and everything else on Donut.
We've got four weekly shows right now.
In the next couple months we're gonna bring it to seven
and that's just the beginning.
To make sure you don't miss any of that stuff,
go ahead and hit that subscribe button,
hit that bell and we'll let you know what's coming out.
We got a podcast now.
It's called Pass Gas and every week Nolan, me, and Joe
dive deep into the history of the craziest,
most awesome stories, in the automotive world.
We actually started a second YouTube channel
just for podcasts.
Keep loving cars, I love you guys.