Mercedes-Benz OM 326 engine

The Mercedes-Benz OM 326 was a much larger six-cylinder diesel engine that Daimler-Benz introduced in 1956 for the heavier trucks of the large OM 300 series. Besides a considerably bigger displacement, its individual cylinder heads called for a wider spacing between the cylinders, which made the engine longer and with it the bonnet that housed it. When the series moved to direct injection the engine became the OM 346, and a further increase in output followed as the OM 355, which answered the relaxed Seebohm laws and the rising power demands placed on trucks. The OM 326 and its direct-injection successors were in turn replaced from 1970 by the OM 400 series, which was built as a modular family of V engines.