This week I used to be in Stuttgart, Germany to see some new Mercedes-Benz automobiles that I can’t discuss but, which is simply too unhealthy for you. However fortunately for you, I additionally bought to spend a couple of hours on the fabulous Mercedes-Benz Museum and may discuss all of the wacky shit that’s in there, like this 1938 O 10000 that was used as a cellular submit workplace after World Warfare II. Whereas that’s very cool and proper up our alley right here at Jalopnik, what made this bus initially catch my eye was its ridiculous entrance overhang.
I imply, simply have a look at it! Have you ever ever seen an overhang like that earlier than? It jogs my memory of a proboscis monkey, or a personality from an off-brand cartoon. This O 10000 is powered by a 683-cubic-inch diesel six-cylinder engine that sits virtually utterly forward of the entrance axle, and with 148 horsepower it may hit a high pace of 40 mph. Not unhealthy for one thing this gigantic that I assume weighs about one million kilos. To make up for the long-ass nostril, there are information rods with spherical mirrors hooked up to the entrance bumper to extra simply maneuver the bus in cities.
In regular configurations these 14-meter-long buses may maintain as much as 60 folks, and this one was initially constructed as a long-distance folks service. After World Warfare II it was put into use by the Austrian Postal Service to hold packages between Salzburg and Vienna, however in some unspecified time in the future (Mercedes estimates within the Nineteen Sixties) it was transformed to be a cellular submit workplace that provided “the entire vary of companies of the state-owned Austrian submit and communications service supplier on a brief foundation.”
On the surface of the bus you’ll discover a letter field with a sophisticated flap, the place clients may drop off their mail, and home windows the place clients may work together with staff sitting contained in the bus to purchase stamps, ship telegrams, change packages or do the rest {that a} regular submit workplace may. The bus additionally has personal phone cubicles accessed by doorways on the left facet, the place you possibly can even make worldwide long-distance calls through the rotary telephones screwed to the wall. Contained in the bus are seats hooked up to the ground that may slide round, folding desks, a fridge and a sink. Whereas it didn’t have air-con, a display screen door behind the bus introduced in some contemporary air.
Its yellow and black livery is a nod to the postal service’s lengthy historical past, because the museum explains: “Within the late fifteenth century, Maximilian I, a member of the Hapsburg dynasty, bestowed them on the Home of Thurn und Taxis as its emblem. The Thurn and Taxis noble household have been to take over the postal service within the Empire. In 1615, they have been appointed Imperial Postmasters Normal. To this present day, postal automobiles in numerous European nations are painted in shades of yellow – and infrequently have a Mercedes star on the entrance.”
Mercedes mentioned this bus remained in service by the Austrian submit by the top of the Seventies. Now the O 10000 sits in among the finest areas of the museum: the Gallery of Carriers, which showcases all kinds of buses, transport vehicles and different automobiles that you simply may not count on to be on show at a automobile museum.
