1965_mercedes-benz_lt-8_l319_firetruck

This 1965 Mercedes-Benz fire truck is hot

Christopher Tracy

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Comments

This 1965 Mercedes-Benz L319/L407 Fire Truck is currently for sale on Bring a Trailer. The BaT commenters are fired up about it too.

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Not really. This truck was used as an actual fire truck in Germany before being imported into North America and is currently located in British Columbia.

Powertrain

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The power comes from a 1.9-liter gas four-cylinder engine. The inline-four is a single overhead cam and the first variations made 75 horsepower. Later versions of the engine were able to achieve over 100 horsepower and 114 lb-ft of torque. The 1.9-liter engine is mated to a three-speed manual transmission. This powertrain setup has lead to many jokes about the structural integrity of any buildings that this fire truck is coming to rescue. This engine and transmission setup was also in Mercedes-Benz 190, 190SL, and Unimogs. The BAT commenters assume that this truck is too slow to ever save anything. They go as far as to assume that the cat stuck in the tree would starve before its rescue. The commenters didn’t actually say that, but the theme is on par for the rest of their comments about this 1965 fire truck.

Looks Good

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It looks damn good. There are some that restore fire trucks for parades. This truck would win all of the parades. The exterior has been repainted and the taillights have been updated in the past, but overall the Mercedes looks really great.

Interior

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Is “Past-Future” a phrase? Or is it “Future-Classic?” However you would say it, the interior of this truck looks different, but it a great way. Ross Ballot even compared it to some of the Blastolene projects. The driver and front passenger had to be senior ranking firefighters since they are the only ones in the vehicle who have padded seat cushions. The second row of seating is wooden benches.

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The cargo space is spacious and looks like it would convert easily into a perfect camper vehicle. There is a water pump located on the front bumper, but there does not appear to be an onboard storage capacity for any water.

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Which is your favorite fire truck?

About

Christopher Tracy

Christopher Tracy

Chris works in marketing by day and writes offroad automotive pieces by night. Chris is the producer/cohost of the Off The Road Again Podcast. A dad trying to get his kids outside more. IG: @overlandingdad.

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24 responses to “This 1965 Mercedes-Benz fire truck is hot”

  1. Dabidoh_Sambone Avatar
    Dabidoh_Sambone

    What a fantastic reference. Love the movie, love the literal metaphor of being a “fire” truck.

    Reply
  2. SlowJoeCrow Avatar
    SlowJoeCrow

    I really like the Japanese Kei truck fire engines

    https://www.autotrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/hijet-1.jpg?w=1024&h=580&crop=1

    Reply
  3. outback_ute Avatar
    outback_ute

    In 1965 more powerful trucks would have been available, so I’m guessing it was based in a town/city where it was not expected to run more than 10 miles, and probably had a top speed of 40mph. Plenty of trucks had under 100hp.

    Reply
  4. Maymar Avatar
    Maymar

    I think retro-futurism is the term you’re looking for.

    Also, I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees these and thinks camper. Just, with 75hp, I’d probably have to plan a little to find a feasible route through the Rockies.

    Reply
    1. Vairship Avatar
      Vairship

      Just put it in first gear and it’ll drive right up. You don’t even need a road! Might take a year or so though…

      Reply
      1. Maymar Avatar
        Maymar

        Heh, I drove a marginally less underpowered Toyota HiAce around New Zealand, and there was one or two points where I wasn’t sure even first gear would be enough.

        Reply
        1. Vairship Avatar
          Vairship

          Knowing Mercedes (and Unimog), this thing has a RIDICULOUSLY low gear. You don’t need much hp in a truck if you have torque.

          Reply
  5. danleym Avatar
    danleym

    While just about every fire engine in the US has an onboard water tank, it doesn’t seem uncommon in big cities Europe to not have an onboard tank. With a well enough developed hydrant system, they might just not be as necessary as they are in the US or in more rural areas.

    Reply
    1. Sjalabais Avatar
      Sjalabais

      This, exactly. Even villages tend to have a decent network of fire hydrants. And a lot of fire trucks are driven short distances on narrow streets, if being driven at all. We have a 6000 km 1965 Dodge firetruck in our municipality that was just decommissioned.

      Reply
    2. 0A5599 Avatar
      0A5599

      Usually the hydrant is connected to the truck, which then pumps high-pressure water to a second or additional hoses to extinguish the fire. Having the onboard tank allows the pump to start priming and the output hose to start extinguishing before the hydrant is connected. Maybe that only reduces preparation time by 15 or 20 seconds, but in the early stages of a fire, that can be a lot of critical time.

      Reply
      1. danleym Avatar
        danleym

        Exactly. We (I drive a fire truck for a living) can use the onboard tank to begin (and often complete) extinguishment. Hooking up to a hydrant takes time, and often we can get a quicker hit by using tank water, even if we still have to catch a hydrant after.

        For whatever reason, not all European cities operate the same way as we do though. Many don’t have onboard tanks. I don’t know why.

        Reply
        1. nanoop Avatar
          nanoop

          In Germany, cities and municipalities have one or more fire stations that take the daily business. They tend to have proper training, equipment, and are usually professionals. They do most (traffic) accidents, so they have cars with tanks and usually the big first-help kit, and they have special equipment vehicles like 30m ladders, jaw-of-life/chain saw/heavy tools car. Since they are basically sitting idle they are the first firemen to arrive within cities.

          On the other end, there is a duty to provide firemen in all villages above x souls, those are the volunteers (they exist in larger cities, too, in parallel to the professionals). These village stations have something like the vehicle discussed here, a basic fire kit. When the siren on the firestation sings, you drop the hammer and jog over there, jump into the uniform and call out the radio operator what the fuss is about. These stations suck for autobahn accidents (they got a 10kg extinguisher and a signalling disk to negotiate approach speeds.. I had that job once, at night: “high visibility” is a relative thing), and are hardly any good for apartment fires for the reasons you mention, but these are really handy when you have MANY of them (like dozens) acting together: you can supply substantial amounts of water from remote sources (miles) per pumping chain. We’ve trained that, a lot, because that’s what our specialty was meant to be.

          The concept stems from the burning of the Lüneburg Heath in 1975: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_on_the_L%C3%BCneburg_Heath
          After that, they all had the same radio bands accessible, compatible hose couplings, and in coastal states everything was saltwater-proof.

          It doesn’t make sense to deploy the village people to car crashes and kitchen fires, but when the sawmill is burning and the sawdust bunker is about to ignite you’re rather happy that you can drop tens of cubic meters per hour for a couple of hours.

          Reply
        2. 0A5599 Avatar
          0A5599

          I know someone who used to live overseas when the next neighborhood over, 200 houses burned to the ground because the firetrucks were wider than the streets. That can happen in cities that got built up in the days before automobiles.

          Reply
          1. danleym Avatar
            danleym

            I believe it. I’ve walked down some narrow European streets. It surprises me that the department wouldn’t have had a plan though. We have some streets we can’t take the ladder truck down. We also have a pickup truck that we can throw the most important equipment into and still get in there. At least the pumpers fit, so we don’t have to worry about water.

          2. Vairship Avatar
            Vairship

            Hence: https://jalopnik.com/this-two-headed-citroen-2cv-fire-vehicle-is-a-weird-sy-1838411075 Very small turning radius!

        3. nanoop Avatar
          nanoop

          In Germany, cities and municipalities have one or more fire stations that take the daily business. They tend to have proper training, equipment, and are usually professionals. They do most (traffic) accidents, so they have cars with tanks and usually the big first-help kit, and they have special equipment vehicles like 30m ladders, jaw-of-life/chain saw/heavy tools car. Since they are basically sitting idle they are the first firemen to arrive within cities.

          On the other end, there is a duty to provide firemen in all villages above x souls, those are the volunteers (they exist in larger cities, too, in parallel to the professionals). These village stations have something like the vehicle discussed here, a basic fire kit. When the siren on the firestation sings, you drop the hammer and jog over there, jump into the uniform and call out the radio operator what the fuss is about. These stations suck for autobahn accidents (they got a 10kg extinguisher and a signalling disk to negotiate approach speeds.. I had that job once, at night: “high visibility” is a relative thing), and are hardly any good for apartment fires for the reasons you mention, but these are really handy when you have MANY of them (like dozens) acting together: you can supply substantial amounts of water from remote sources (miles) per pumping chain. We’ve trained that, a lot, because that’s what our specialty was meant to be.

          The concept stems from the burning of the Lüneburg Heath in 1975: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_on_the_L%C3%BCneburg_Heath
          After that, they all had the same radio bands accessible, compatible hose couplings, and in coastal states everything was saltwater-proof.

          It doesn’t make sense to deploy the village people to car crashes and kitchen fires, but when the sawmill is burning and the sawdust bunker is about to ignite you’re rather happy that you can drop tens of cubic meters per hour for a couple of hours.

          Reply
  6. SlowJoeCrow Avatar
    SlowJoeCrow

    I really like the Japanese Kei truck fire engines

    https://www.autotrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/hijet-1.jpg?w=1024&h=580&crop=1

    Reply
    1. SlowJoeCrow Avatar
      SlowJoeCrow

      Also for small places, like the Morris Minor fire engine in the Heritage Museum in Gaydon which was sized to fit between the assembly lines in the factory.

      Reply
  7. SlowJoeCrow Avatar
    SlowJoeCrow

    I really like the Japanese Kei truck fire engines

    https://www.autotrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/hijet-1.jpg?w=1024&h=580&crop=1

    Reply
  8. Zentropy Avatar
    Zentropy

    That thing is S W E E T. It’d make a fun camper conversion.

    Reply
  9. desmo Avatar
    desmo

    Those wooden benches stem from commuter trains. These trains were continously in service in Germany for over 60 years. http://www.stadtschnellbahn.de/Fahrzeuge/0289833_I.jpg

    Reply
  10. nanoop Avatar
    nanoop

    That’s probably an LF8, so the pump would whop 800L/min from 8m depth – that’s quite a load for the engine.

    No, no water tank, these were used in larger villages where Feuerlöschteiche (ponds) were large and distances were short – mitigating the acceleration requirements: 0-60kph within 40s. If you think the thing is slow, put nine grown-ups with gear in there, a few hundred meters of hose, eight of those super-heavy suction pipes for the pump, and maybe even a carry-able (by four) fire pump. Typical deployments today are dominated by small fires because everybody has a phone and the fire trucks have engines now: the fire didn’t spread as violently yet. So the pump in the rear was dropped in favor of a 600L tank (sometimes with a dedicated “stationary” pump in the rear).

    The driver is the Maschinist (engineer), the passenger seat is the Gruppenführer (group leader). The rear was occupied by the teams Angriffstrupp (attack troops), Schlauchtrupp (hose troops) and Wassertrupp (water troops), with the Melder (messenger) in the middle row’s middle, so he can hear the Gruppenführer and operate the Sprechfunkgerät (radio).
    The wooden ladder should have been replaced by ~1995 by an Aluminiumleiter.

    Yepp, I was the Melder and later Maschinist of a voluntary fire brigade of my German home village in the mid-90ies. We had an Opel Blitz, which was overloaded by 1 metric ton – without the eight extra people. I drove it to an actual deployment only once, phew.
    Edit – Similar to this one:
    http://tuxpingu.bplaced.net/4images/data/media/6/opelBlitzLf8.jpg

    Reply
    1. Victor~~ Avatar
      Victor~~

      Spent a year in Kaiserslautern and loved Germany .

      Reply
    2. danleym Avatar
      danleym

      That’s cool to hear a firsthand account of these! Such a different strategy and vehicle than what we use in the states.

      Reply