Mercedes celebrates 60th anniversary of Unimog with new concept

The Mercedes-Benz Special Trucks unit (MBS) revealed a design study celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Unimog at the Daimler plant in Wörth recently. The concept, called simply ‘60 Years Unimog', is said to inform the future form language of Mercedes-Benz commercial vehicle design.

Combining of the past and future of the Unimog, the MBS development team, the Daimler commercial vehicle designers in Sindelfingen and a model designing partner have created an avant-garde vehicle that retains the inherent functionality and capabilities of the now iconic vehicle.

"We have taken the Unimog-DNA with its unique concept features to 100 percent into consideration when creating this design concept," says Bertrand Janssen from the Daimler department for commercial vehicle design.

Based on the Unimog U 5000 chassis, Janssen's team was inspired by the poison dart frog in the creation of the ‘fresh green'-colored concept. Just like the Unimog, the poison dart frog is extremely mobile both in water and on land, but the amphibian's color also represents a link between past and future: the very first Unimog to roll off the assembly line in 1951 was also finished in green.

Other visual identifiers on the concept include the open top cabin; clearly visible, sweeping lines of the aluminum frame; headlights that are reminiscent of stage lights; and the vehicle's four, five star alu-rim design wheels, which make a strong optical impression. The vehicle's coil springs – a well-known unique selling-point of the Unimog – are painted red on the concept vehicle.

"On no account did we work in an atmosphere where our ideas were divorced from reality," Bertrand Janssen emphasizes. "Here we have a vehicle which is puristic, but still clearly true to concept – with the claim that some of its details will turn up in coming product ranges in future."

By Eric Gallina