Here’s An Interesting Look at the Mercedes Benz ‘Measuring Car’ Rolling Laboratory from 1960 – FutureCar.com

The Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany features a regular installment collection named “Shut-up” that tells an exciting, powering-the-scenes tale of a car, show or an element of layout from the automaker’s storied earlier.

The Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart spans 16,500 sq. meters and celebrates the record of the automaker from 1886. Much more than 160 cars are on screen at the museum, ranging from the oldest Mercedes Benz designs ever designed to legendary race cars and trucks and futuristic exploration cars. 

The most recent Near-up installment is attention-grabbing, as it features a a lot more in-depth appear at the “Mercedes-Benz 300” becoming applied as a “Measuring Vehicle” back again in 1960.

The Mercedes-Benz W186 Product 300 Measuring Car or truck was outfitted with electronics so that the automaker’s engineers could get auto knowledge from a different examination car or truck although traveling down the street. 

As automobiles turned much more sophisticated in the 1950’s and 1960’s, examining sensor details became significantly essential for Mercedes Benz. It offered engineers with worthwhile facts about whether a motor vehicle process or a new creation worked as intended, or how it could be enhanced. 

Even so the measuring devices in the 1950s ended up big, major, and delicate. Incorporating major tools to a vehicle’s suspension for case in point, variations its driving traits because of to the additional excess weight. The option was ingeniously uncomplicated. Mercedes-Benz despatched the details to a 2nd vehicle for assessment as the two had been driving down the road, as a result the “measuring auto” invention was born.

The measuring vehicle was developed applying the Model 300 four-door luxury sedan produced by Mercedes-Benz among 1951 and 1957. Even so, this specific product was based mostly on the personalized-constructed estate cars, or station wagons, made for the first German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. 

 The car or truck eventually turned recognized as an “Adenauer” due to the Chancellor’s preference for this model. The rear of the Product 300 sedan was extended to resemble a station wagon and outfitted with panoramic rear home windows.  

To serve as a measuring vehicle in 1960, Mercedes-Benz engineers tethered the Design 300 to a Mercedes-Benz 220 S (W 111) working with a bundle of electrical cables up to 30 meters long, which essentially connected the two cars together.

Mercedes referred to the set up as a type of early “local place network” (LAN). The cables transmit sensor information from the guide vehicle to the measuring units in the rear of the Model 300.

The flagship Model 300 was chosen due to the fact Mercedes-Benz engineers required a rapidly and massive auto to be equipped to transportation a large sum of hefty and bulky measuring machines and still be capable to preserve up with the direct car or truck.

The rear compartment of the Measuring Car was loaded with digital tools.

Engineers guided the prototype (direct automobile) by means of dynamic car or truck managing checks, while the rolling laboratory measuring automobile followed at a near length and acquired the facts by means of the cables from lead vehicle’s subsystems, such as the suspension. 

The guide vehicle was capable of transmitting 14 calculated values simultaneously to the measuring automobile pursuing intently at the rear of.

The rear cabin of the car was outfitted with a lot of measuring instruments, as properly as two individual seats with slim, wicker backrests resembling back garden chairs to accommodate the engineers tasked with gathering facts in the tight place.

Mercedes-Benz claimed each individual little bit of obtainable space in the rear of the 300 was utilized for the sensitive measuring devices. To supply the equipment with energy, Mercedes engineers additional a generator, as perfectly as a radio hyperlink involving the two cars. The information transmission was performed by way of telemetry using radio signals.

The engineers in the back of the measuring vehicle did not generally enjoy major comfort and ease, in accordance to Mercedes. Headroom was confined and the huge panoramic windows created a little something of a greenhouse effect. To support the engineers continue to be neat, the overall body had ventilation openings on the sides.

In most situations, the sensor facts was recorded in the measuring auto on magnetic tape, then taken to a additional silent and relaxed laboratory for even more assessment.

A bundle of cables up to 30 meters lengthy linked the two Mercedes-Benz autos jointly for information assortment.

The converted Mercedes-Benz 300 measuring vehicle was productively employed for lots of yrs until the 1970’s as a rolling laboratory, mostly on the automaker’s test observe in Untertürkheim. 

These days, details collection is substantially much more sophisticated than in 1960 and the full information assortment process travels with a one prototype. Present day sensors and laptop technologies make it feasible, considering that the electronic devices can be manufactured lighter and smaller sized. 

The variety of concurrently recorded data channels has also increased considerably from 14 in 1960 to far more than 1,000 on the modern-day autos that Mercedes-Benz is tests currently. It really is secure to say that dynamic car or truck tests has occur a lengthy way given that its humble beginnings.