Opel Blitz 3,6

The Opel Blitz 3,6 is a small truck of Adam Opel AG for a payload of 3 tonnes. This model of the Blitz truck range was produced for the Wehrmacht at the Opel plant in Brandenburg until August 1944 and then, until the end of the war, at the Mannheim plant of Daimler-Benz. Opel presented the 3-tonne type 3,6-36 S in May 1936, and from mid-1937 the Wehrmacht bought it systematically, first as a troop carrier and as a flatbed truck. It became the most used truck of the Wehrmacht. Its 3.6 litre overhead-valve six-cylinder engine came from the Opel Admiral and was throttled from 75 PS (55 kW) to 68 PS (50 kW) for a better torque curve in military use. The 3,6-42 S had a longer wheelbase of 4.2 metres, and from July 1940 the 3,6-6700 A had four-wheel drive. The Brandenburg plant reached its production peak of 2,600 trucks in July 1944, before an air raid on 6 August 1944 stopped truck production for good. Daimler-Benz built a further 3,500 as the Mercedes-Benz L 701 and continued it after the war until 1949.