An Unexpected Legend: Celebrating 100 Years Maybach W3

Today we are pre­sent­ing a recent­ly acquired, icon­ic image of an orig­i­nal adver­tise­ment for the ²²⁄₇₀ PS May­bach car that we today know under its des­ig­na­tion W 3 (‘W’ is short for the Ger­man word ‘Wagen’ = vehicle/​car). The year 2021 sees the 100-year-anniver­sary of its launch – a fit­ting occa­sion to look into the pre­text that led to the orig­i­nal May­bach cars being built in Friedrichshafen at the May­bach Motor Works.

WWI meant a cea­sura to world his­to­ry and when it end­ed, it had left many parts of the world dev­as­tat­ed. The impact on glob­al mar­kets and economies was like­wise dras­tic. For May­bach Motor Works it meant that the area in which they had proven their com­pe­tence, was now pro­hib­it­ed. The Ver­sailles treaty of 1919 stat­ed that all pro­duc­tion of aer­i­al machin­ery in Ger­many shall cease. How­ev­er, it was clear, that the company’s capac­i­ties in con­struct­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing high-per­for­mance engines could also be applied to oth­er appli­ca­tions, one of which was auto­mo­biles. Karl May­bach, who over­saw May­bach Motor Works, had devel­oped a rac­ing car engine in France that served as the base for the devel­op­ments of aer­i­al propul­sion. His father Wil­helm May­bach had done ground­break­ing work which cul­mi­nat­ed in the first Mer­cedes in 1901 which defined the shape of the mod­ern automobile.

In 1919 the W 1 type engine was installed in a Daim­ler tour­ing car bought from mil­i­tary sur­plus and was com­bined with a new­ly devel­oped cool­er mask, essen­tial­ly giv­ing the vehi­cle a ‘face’ — the first May­bach test vehi­cle had seen the light of day. This car was giv­en the same des­ig­na­tion as the engine it was using – “W 1” — and though pho­to­graph­ic doc­u­ments exist, the orig­i­nal is lost with­out a trace. Hav­ing fur­ther enhanced the W 1 type engine to 70 horse­pow­er and label­ing it W 2, the May­bach Motor Works set out look­ing for a part­ner to sup­ply the new­ly devel­oped car engine to. Trompen­burg, a Dutch man­u­fac­tur­er was cho­sen. The car they mar­ket­ed became known as Spijk­er Tenax, the lat­ter mean­ing ‘tena­cious’. Indeed, the prod­uct man­aged to achieve some suc­cess, with vic­to­ries at sev­er­al endurance rides, one of which was the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of a 30,000 km jour­ney through the snowy Nether­lands at which the Spijk­ter beat an old­er record set by Rolls Royce. Despite this promis­ing start, the coöper­a­tion soon came to an end as Trompen­burg filed for bank­rupt­cy. Mean­while, in Friedrichshafen, there was now a back­log of engines that were ready to be used – but the part­ner would not install or pay for them, only 150 of 1000 ordered were used. It was this twist of fate that led to May­bach cars being built in Friedrichshafen at May­bach Motor Works.

Back then cars were often man­u­fac­tured as chas­sis, onto which a body­work was installed. This was also the path tak­en at May­bach Motor Works but now a chas­sis need­ed to be devel­oped. The task was quick­ly tak­en up and com­plet­ed not much lat­er. One would expect the W 1 car to be fol­lowed by a W 2 mod­el, but inter­est­ing­ly no such vehi­cle is known to have exist­ed. The first May­bach Car in ser­i­al pro­duc­tion got the des­ig­na­tion W 3. It used an enhanced W 2 type engine and was pre­sent­ed in 1921 at the IAA (Inter­na­tionale Auto­mo­bil Ausstel­lung = Inter­na­tion­al Auto­mo­bile Exhi­bi­tion) Berlin from the 23^rd of Sep­tem­ber to the 2^nd of Octo­ber. Deliv­er­ing 70 horse­pow­er already at 2200 revs., it was met with good res­o­nance by the press and the pub­lic as it com­bined the May­bach qual­i­ty stan­dard with new tech­ni­cal intri­ca­cies. Two of these are men­tioned on our adver­tis­ing page: ‘Ohne Schal­tung’, mean­ing ‘with­out gear shift’ and ‘Vier­rad-Bremse’ mean­ing ‘four-wheel break’. The first meant that due to the engine’s elas­tic­i­ty, the car used only two gears which could be shift­ed via a foot lever. As a result the dri­ver rarely had to take his or her hands off the steer­ing wheel. Anoth­er inno­va­tion was embed­ding the mech­a­nism for the horn into the door – the dri­ver there­by could use it with his or her fore­arm. The four-wheel brake sys­tem men­tioned above, which had been devel­oped at May­bach, made dri­ving a safer endeav­or and was for the first time used in a ser­i­al car in Ger­many. These inno­va­tions effec­tiv­i­ty fur­ther enhanced dri­ving com­fort as it less­ened the need to shift gears. May­bach cars were nev­er pro­duced in large num­bers because they were top-notch prod­ucts in terms of reli­a­bil­i­ty, qual­i­ty, and per­for­mance and they were cor­re­spond­ing­ly expen­sive. Sad­ly, none of the remark­able W 3 series has sur­vived. The chas­sis by itself cost a whop­ping 24,000 Reichs­marks and an addi­tion­al 15 to 25,000 had to be added, depend­ing on what kind of body was to be installed. For ref­er­ence: the aver­age year­ly salary in 1924 was 1,233 Reichs­marks. The cars that fol­lowed the W 3, such as the twelve Cylin­der mod­els May­bach 12 and DS 7 and 8, are leg­ends to this day still — a hun­dred years after the sto­ry began.

For more, follow us on Instagram, Facebook & LinkedIn!

You can also reach our Museum/​Archive team at museum@​maybach.​org.

We look forward to hearing from you!