MAN

The history of MAN

MAN came to tractors from the motor plough, and left them because Porsche changed its mind.

Professor R. Bernstein of Halle drew up plans for a motor plough in 1916: a one-man machine on a single driven axle, with the gearbox casing doing double duty as the frame and the engine mount. The war interrupted it. The MAN Tragpflug was shown in 1921 with a four-cylinder petrol engine throttled to 20 hp at 700 rpm, soon raised to 30 hp with no ill effects. It ploughed cleanly, steered easily and turned well, and it won the DLG's silver commemorative medal.

In 1924 the first compressionless diesel engine with direct injection was tested in the Tragpflug. Sales of the farm machines were modest all the same — 300 in total. (The same encyclopedia credits Hürlimann with the first direct-injection diesel in 1939; we publish both claims and have not resolved them.)

A tractor proper was drawn up in 1937 around the four-cylinder diesel already proven in lorries, throttled to 50 hp at 1,500 rpm. The new feature was a sprung swing axle at the front, available driven, which improved traction — four-wheel drive itself would take another fifteen years to begin prevailing. The AS 250 went into production in 1938, but MAN had to put tractor building behind war work; production was resumed during the war with the French firm Latil, and about 1,000 four-wheel-drive 50 hp tractors were delivered by 1944.

In 1949 the choice fell on the light AS 325 with MAN's own high-speed diesel. The optional four-wheel drive raised traction by 20% and found particular favour on heavy ground and in forestry. In 1951–52 S. Meurer developed the centre-sphere combustion process, recognised years later worldwide as the M process, which burned better, used less fuel and ran more quietly; it reached production only in 1955.

The AS 718A of 1955 was MAN's first 18 hp tractor, and its engine came from Güldner, because MAN had nothing of its own that small. Otherwise the firm stayed with the middle and upper end, at 32, 45 and 50 hp. A modular principle arrived in 1961, with engine installation left variable so a customer could choose two, three or four cylinders built from the same cylinder unit.

In 1962 MAN agreed to coordinate its production programme with Porsche, under which MAN tractors would be built at Porsche. When Porsche gave up tractor production in March 1963, that ended MAN's tractors with it. Renault took over the supply of spare parts.

Written from Traktorenlexikon: MAN, Wikibooks, CC BY-SA 4.0 · retrieved 2026-09-14. Our words, not the source's.