Snowy Mountain Roads? No Problem When You’re Powered by the Best Propulsion Available!

Win­ter and its dif­fi­cult con­di­tions with slip­pery roads are still a prob­lem today. Now on top of that, add the aspect of hav­ing to dri­ve up a steep moun­tain. This not being enough, now imag­ine only hav­ing 1930s tech­nol­o­gy available.

It was this espe­cial­ly adverse envi­ron­ment for a car that May­bach­Mo­toren­bau (May­bach Engine Works) used for one of its most icon­ic adverts. The auto­mo­bile dri­ving up strong ascent is ren­dered in hues of green and orange to cre­ate a strong com­ple­men­tary con­trast. Shades of blue are used to depict the snowy moun­tain which con­sti­tutes the fore­ground and back­ground. The typog­ra­phy is neat­ly embed­ded in square shape into the motive – it reads May­bach Berg­bezwinger (‘Moun­tain Con­queror’), May­bach 12, Type Zep­pelin fol­lowed by the con­tact infor­ma­tion of May­bach Engine Works. This data is fol­lowed by an impres­sive list where May­bach agents were estab­lished back then: It starts with Berlin and ends with New York.

Adver­tis­ing and its promis­es are one thing one may say – so how much real­i­ty is in this graph­i­cal­ly beau­ti­ful­ly exe­cut­ed art­work? One has to start by answer­ing this ques­tion by look­ing at the tech­ni­cal aspects that May­bach cars were bring­ing to the table. May­bach cars which entered the mar­ket in 1921 were absolute state of the art and demon­strat­ed what was pos­si­ble con­cern­ing pow­er­ful engines and gears com­bined with ground­break­ing tech­ni­cal intri­ca­cies that were added. A high torque com­bined is an essen­tial aspect that May­bach car engines were known for – ease of accel­er­a­tion and man­ag­ing ascent with no prob­lems were two of the more obvi­ous prof­its. May­bach how­ev­er used this aspect to help enable fea­tures that were unheard of before, name­ly the Vor­wählschal­tung (Pre­s­e­lec­tion Gear-Shift Mech­a­nism) that allowed to switch gears via a lever on the steer­ing wheel. Good elas­tic­i­ty is anoth­er fea­ture of the engines that May­bach Engine works con­struct­ed their car engines with. Due to this char­ac­ter­is­tic increas­es in strain (in the sense of an increase in dri­ving resis­tance), such as when dri­ving uphill as in our exam­ple, can be man­aged with­out chang­ing gear despite a drop in speed.

These and oth­er tech­ni­cal aspects com­bined with long-last­ing qual­i­ty made it pos­si­ble to take part in races and endurance rides. Some of which, name­ly the 1924 Win­ter Ride orga­nized by the ADAC (Acronym for All­ge­mein­er Deutsch­er Auto­mo­bil-Club, Gen­er­al Ger­man Auto­mo­bile Club, found­ed in 1903 and today Europe’s largest motor­ing asso­ci­a­tion) laid proof that a May­bach car was able to face the harsh con­di­tions of snowy moun­tain roads: The first three places went to May­bach Engine Works. May­bach Cars were prod­ucts that were pro­duced to the high­est stan­dards and there­fore also last­ed a long time – if cor­rect­ly tak­en care of. Indeed, some of the few pro­duced cars remain to this day and lived some very inter­est­ing lives.

A white May­bach Zep­pelin DS 8, which still exists today, is one of the rare exam­ples that was built as a two-seater cabri­o­let, what is more, it strik­ing­ly resem­bles the car depict­ed in the ‘Berg­bezwinger’ advert. The sketch is shown here, which dates rough­ly from the same time, also is of a car with a very sim­i­lar lay­out. This rare vehicle’s sto­ry tells the glob­al con­nec­tions of the brand May­bach. The car was com­mis­sioned by Gus­tav Zingg, an immi­grant from Ger­many to Venezuela and a wealthy busi­ness­man. Among his jobs also was to be May­bach sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive in South­ern Amer­i­ca because he had per­son­al ties with Karl May­bach. Orig­i­nal­ly deliv­ered as the first twelve-cylin­der mod­el, the May­bach 12, it, lat­er on, was retro­fit­ted with the last iter­a­tion of the twelve-cylin­der car engines, the DS 8, which also might have includ­ed the instal­la­tion of anoth­er radi­a­tor grill. After deliv­ery, the car sup­pos­ed­ly also made the jour­ney across the Atlantic sev­er­al times as Zingg trav­eled back to Ger­many. For some decades the car was neglect­ed as ter­mites had dam­aged it. Hel­mut Hof­mann, the prob­a­bly most impor­tant May­bach car col­lec­tor how­ev­er man­aged to track it down and made the pur­chase. The car’s last jour­ney back to Europe across the ocean turned out to be dev­as­tat­ing – sea­wa­ter par­tial­ly flood­ed the con­tain­er and caused fur­ther dam­age to this very valu­able car. Hav­ing already seen worse the col­lec­tor kept his spir­it up and the car is now exhib­it­ed and restored to all its glo­ry. Today it can be seen in the Muse­um for His­tor­i­cal May­bach Vehi­cles (the only one sole­ly ded­i­cat­ed to these stun­ning vehi­cles) in Neu­markt, Germany.

There are sev­er­al books avail­able on May­bach Cars though one espe­cial­ly stands out. Graf Michael Wolff Metternich’s ‘May­bach Reg­is­ter’ has become a stan­dard source because it records many of the excit­ing sto­ries the cars lived through after deliv­ery. On the 13^th of Feb­ru­ary 1967, Count Met­ter­nich became the found­ing pres­i­dent of the May­bach Club, an asso­ci­a­tion of May­bach car enthu­si­asts and own­ers. Met­ter­nich tire­less­ly record­ed the avail­able infor­ma­tion of cars that were still exis­tent back then, becom­ing one of the lead­ing experts. In 1996 he pub­lished the third and last ver­sion of his impor­tant his­tor­i­cal research.

Count Michael Wolff Met­ter­nich who was born in 1920 and had become known as an essen­tial fig­ure in the field of auto­mo­tive his­to­ry schol­ars, passed away in 2018 but his lega­cy lives on in his books.

In the fol­low­ing, we have col­lect­ed some lit­er­a­ture on the top­ic of May­bach auto­mo­biles. Sad­ly, only one of these is avail­able in Eng­lish, Niemann’s ‘Karl May­bach, his engines and automobiles’.

1. Graf Wolf Met­ter­nich, Michael (1996): May­bach Reg­is­ter, Sieger Ver­lag GmbH, Lorch.
2. Graf Wolf Met­ter­nich, Michael (1990): Dis­tanz zur Masse, Sieger Ver­lag GmbH, Lorch.
3. Mirsching, Ger­hard (2001): May­bach-Karosse­rien aus Ravens­burg, Her­mann Spohn und sein Werk, Robert Gessler Ver­lag, Friedrichshafen.
4. Nie­mann, Har­ry (2006): Karl May­bach, his engines and auto­mo­biles, Clas­sique car Library.
5. Nie­mann, Har­ry (2004): Karl May­bach, seine Motoren und Auto­mo­bile, Motor­buch Ver­lag, Stuttgart.
6. Graf Wolf Met­ter­nich, Michael (1978): May­bach, Die Geschichte der May­bach-Auto­mo­bile, Uhle & Kleimann, Lübbecke.

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