When test drives were still an adventure
At gunpoint
Northern Sweden is also picturesque
© press-inform – the press office
Frank Knothe has seen a lot in his career. When the long-time Mercedes engineer shares one or the other anecdote from his wealth of experience as an automotive engineer, a world reveals itself in which testing cars was even more of an adventure than the art of programming.
At the beginning of the 1970s, the subject of speed came more and more into focus during Mercedes test drives. However, at that time the high-speed oval in Nardo, on which you can drive indefinitely under full load, did not yet exist. So the test convoy emigrated to the natural heat chamber of the Sahara in order to carry out the cooling performance measurements. When there were problems with the visa in Algeria, the resourceful Swabians turned to Mauritania. “The service told us that there is a stretch between the capital Nouakchott and Akjoujt that is straight and even.” The developers then did not do a lot of pen reading and set off for the Mauritanian capital. The cars came from Dakar by ship or plane and the route kept what the company’s trackers had promised. Bolt straight and perfectly flat. As if made to set the pace under the blazing sun. A real endurance test for the cooling systems.
At that time there were already very fast cars. Among other things, the Mercedes SLC (C 107) with a four-disc rotary engine, which at least brought it to a top speed of around 230 km / h. So the entourage shot a full pipe along the street to sound out the load limit of the cooling system. In order to increase the driving resistance, wooden boards that acted like brake spoilers were attached to the roof. On the way back to the capital, the cars were set up again and heated up at full throttle. “Ten kilometers before Nouakchott, an armed man jumped onto the street and I was only just able to avoid it,” says Frank Knothe. The engineer got into the irons and wanted to know what was going on. The law enforcement officer told the perplexed test team at gunpoint in French that they had driven too fast.
When asked where the speed limit was set, the man pulled out a kind of bible, which only said that if you were driving fast, you could expect punctures. The answer that this provision did not apply to the vehicle fleet because they were on good tires fell on deaf ears. “Then he made such a huge vermilion that we thought we were behind bars,” says Frank Knothe. But the tricky situation dissolved when the law enforcement officers recognized the brand of the camouflaged vehicles. The face of the strict officer brightened up in a flash “He called Mercedes très bien, saluted and we were able to drive on. We really had tails,” smiles the former head of overall vehicle testing and later head of the S, SL and SLK-Class series.
In addition to the state power, the overloaded Peugeot flatbed taxis, which often took the entire lane, were a problem. “Once a prototype of the W123 was pushed into the sand and rolled over several times. The guys got out without a bruise. This showed us in the real test that the body shell is very stable. The mechanics even got the car back on track,” recalls Knothe, who has seen seven development directors and several CEOs at Mercedes. The CEOs in particular were not always close to automobiles. Edzard Reuter was such a case. The test drives were often used to discuss new models with superiors. At the prototype tests of the C-Class (W202 series) in Spain, the then Mercedes boss Helmut Werner was present and the first specification sheet for the Mercedes SL R230 was drawn up. The test drives in the 45 to 50 degree hot oven Death Valley in California are also part of the standard procedure. As long as the cars are air-conditioned, that’s still reasonably bearable. But Frank Knothe once crossed the valley of death in a Mercedes 190 D with the OM601 naturally aspirated diesel with the air conditioning switched off. “With this car, you could either cool or drive because of the lack of power,” recalls the Mercedes veteran. Then how do you endure the scorching heat? “Drink a lot.” Incidentally, this model variant was not introduced in the USA.
From the hot sun of Africa and Death Valley to the Arctic. That was the everyday life of a car tester. Even if there were cold chambers in Frank Knothes’s time, there was no avoiding testing in the great outdoors. Back then, cold starts were tried after a bitter night. If the future models were in the open air at night, that was of course a hit for the Erlkönig hunters. The cat and mouse game between engineers and photographers was part of everyday testing. Frank Knote’s cold record is not held by the Swedish Arjeplog, but a side valley towards Norway near the Swedish city of Kiruna, at the end of which is the village of Nikkaluokta. “The lowest temperature I have ever experienced there was minus 38.5 degrees,” says the technician and continues laughing, “there was a telephone booth that is not locked, but only goes up to the knee. And I had a crazy colleague , he had to go in there to make a phone call. “
During the test drives in the north there was an unwritten rule: If you flew into the snow on winter drives in Sweden, you had to pay a contribution to the coffee box, but when the number of people taking part in the test grew, this tradition was stopped, because the prices of alcoholic beverages in Sweden have overwhelmed the penitent’s finances. But that wasn’t the only challenge. “The engineers baked their own bread because the Swedish was so limp,” said the former head of overall vehicle. Knothe is certain that the classic test drives will also be part of the development process in the future. But the former Mercedes head of overall vehicle testing refuses to draw a comparison of the development eras: “There is no good old time, but an old time and there is a new time. It is the same in all areas of life and the same with Automotive engineering. “