01
Origins
The first production Unimogs of 1948 — the 70200 series, built initially by Boehringer before Mercedes-Benz absorbed the project — realised Albert Friedrich's post-war vision: an implement-carrying, all-wheel-drive 'universal motor machine' for German agriculture, with power take-offs, portal axles and equal-size wheels that made it neither tractor nor truck but permanently both. Farmers, forestry and soon armies discovered its impossibility of getting stuck. The concept proved so right that its descendants remain in production at Wörth today, three-quarters of a century on. The 70200 opened one of commercial engineering's longest unbroken arguments: that one machine, properly conceived, can do everything. Seventy-five years later, the argument is still winning. Museum examples still start, work demonstrations still book them, and Wörth still cannot retire the idea.
Unimog U6 · Zandcee · CC BY-SA 3.0
