Mercedes-Benz W02

Mercedes-Benz Typ 8/38 PS / Typ Stuttgart 200 (W 02)
Mercedes-Benz 8/38 PS (1927)
Overview
Manufacturer	Daimler-Benz AG
Also called	1926-33 Mercedes-Benz 8/38 PS 1929-33: Mercedes-Benz Typ Stuttgart 200 1929-33: Mercedes-Benz W02
Production	1926–1933 16,956 cars
Assembly	Stuttgart, Germany
Body and chassis
Body style	Torpedo-bodied "Tourenwagen" 2- & 4-door "Limousine" (sedan/saloon) Cabriolets
Layout	FR layout
Powertrain
Engine	1,988 cc In line six-cylinder sidevalve engine
Dimensions
Wheelbase	2,810 mm (111 in)
Length	4,060 mm (160 in) - 4,375 mm (172.2 in)
Width	1926-29: 1,680 mm (66 in) 1929-33: 1,710 mm (67 in)
Height	1,800 mm (71 in)

The Mercedes-Benz W02 was a midsize six-cylinder two-litre-engined automobile introduced by Daimler-Benz at the Berlin Motor Show in October 1926. It was developed in some haste under the manufacturer’s Technical Director, Ferdinand Porsche in parallel with the smaller Mercedes-Benz W 01 (which never progressed beyond the prototype stage) and the larger three-litre-engined Mercedes-Benz W03 following the creation of Daimler-Benz, formally in July 1926, from the fusion of the Daimler and Benz & Cie auto-businesses.

The new company’s models for 1926 were unencumbered by an excess of technical sophistication, but came from a company with a long-standing reputation for quality: serious teething problems afflicting the early cars were the focus of conflict between Daimler-Benz Chairman, and the Technical Director responsible for the new models: Porsche’s employment contract was not renewed beyond 1928, which led to an acrimonious litigation.

The manufacturer applied the widely followed German naming conventions of the time. On the Mercedes-Benz 8/38 PS the "8" defined the car’s tax horsepower, used by the authorities to determine the level of annual car tax to be imposed on car owners. The "38" defined the manufacturer’s claims regarding car’s actual power output as defined in Horsepower#Metric horsepower (PS, cv, hk, pk, ks, ch). In Germany tax horsepower, which had been defined by statute since 1906, was based on the dimensions of the cylinders in the engine.

Unlike the systems used elsewhere in Europe, the German tax horsepower calculation took account both of the cylinder bore and of the cylinder stroke, and there was therefore a direct linear relationship between engine size and tax horsepower.

The model was effectively relaunched in 1929, and although there were not many changes on paper, the car was now more modern and cultivated, thanks to the attentions of , who from January 1929, newly appointed as Technical Director, held sole responsibility for model development. The relaunch was accompanied by a new name, and the car was now sold as the Mercedes-Benz Typ Stuttgart 200.

In retrospect the car is sometimes referred to by its company works number, as the Mercedes-Benz W02, which minimises the risk of confusion with other Mercedes-Benz models with names similar to "Mercedes-Benz Typ 200".