ASCENT OF MAN
Nowadays, MAN is one of the big names amongst the world’s heavy lorry producers with technical and financial links to Volkswagen and Scania. Back in the 1950s it was a mid-sized player with lower sales than such German rivals as KHD-Magirus, Hanomag and, of course, Daimler-Benz. The predominately light commercial makers in Germany, like Ford, Opel and Volkswagen, outsold MAN’s 4587 lorries and 188 buses in 1958, but then again so did Borgward with 6521 lorries. A three hundred metre assembly track at new Munich production facilities, opened in 1961, had boosted MAN’s output to 9635 in 1967.
Büssing, acquired by MAN in 1971 after a three-year courtship, managed around 900 each of buses and lorries in 1958, though this had increased to a grand total of 2478 in 1967.
MAN had a good product, made even better by the 1940s M version of its G direct injection
