A few weeks ago we produced a video talking about
Duramax engines from the LB7 all the way up to the L5P and in that video, we covered some of the
engines before the Duramax, which are the 6.2L and 6.5L Detroit Diesel engines. And, that got
me thinking, how far back does Detroit Diesel go? Where did they come from? Where did they go? What
did they do in between? And what are they doing now? Well, the storyline of the diesel engine
itself starts in europe in the 1800s, thanks to a man named Rudolph Diesel. Detroit Diesel
didn't start until about 1930s here in the US. So, sit back, get comfy, get your popcorn,
because today i'm going to tell you everything you need to know about
Detroit Diesel and their full history. To understand where Detroit Diesel came from, we
need to rewind the clock a little bit to 1929, before the company was ever formed. Right at this
time, the US was recovering from the stock market crash of 1929 and General Motors was focused
on acquisitions, since companies are cheaper to purchase after an economic crash. Luckily for
GM, they were in a good financial position to scoop up companies for pennies on the dollars and
that's exactly what they did. General Motors was really looking to buy a diesel engine manufacturer
and they were heavily interested in a handful of companies including Cummins, but ultimately
settled on purchasing Winton. At that time, Winton was well known as the premier builder for
diesel engines and work boats and yachts. But, before that acquisition happened, Charles
Kettering, one of the smart inventors of the automobile industry, was approached by
Alfred Sloan, who at the time was the president of General Motors. Alfred wanted to build
diesel engines and figured Charles Kettering was the right guy for the job. Long story short,
Charles Kettering, like many automotive executives had a yacht, and his yacht had a Cooper-Bessemer
four-stroke engine. He did not like the performance of the engine and after trying to
rebuild it and improve upon the injection system, he gave up and decided to motor swap his yacht to
a Winton engine. But, he specifically wanted his Winton engines to be equipped with unit injectors,
but Winton was not fond of this idea. Ultimately, Winton did put unit injectors on their engine
for Kettering, but they were basically garbage and failed immediately. So, with that in mind,
Kettering insisted that General Motors develop their own unit injector on Big Bertha, which was a
big single cylinder two-stroke engine. Eventually, Kettering and General Motors figured out the unit
injector and got them to work well and then put them onto the Winton engine in Kettering's yacht
and they immediately went on an 18-hour cruise, where those newly designed unit injectors gave
them zero problems and worked almost perfectly. Jumping back to 1930, Charles Kettering began
his own research into a two-stroke diesel by having Winton build two single cylinder test
engines for him. One of those engines was shipped to electromotive company, who GM bought
around the same time that they bought Winton. And the other engine was sent to Kettering's lab
in Detroit. Ultimately, it was all a success and Winton started producing a ton of big engines
for use in things like submarines for the Navy, trains, and much more. But in 1937, GM changed
things up and Winton effectively became the Cleveland Engine Division, which would continue to
produce marine and stationary power applications. That takes us to 1938, one year after forming
the Cleveland Engine Division, they formed the Detroit Diesel engine division. The idea was
basically take all the R&D that they had done with the large two-stroke engines and shrink
it down to a smaller platform, one that wasn't meant for marine, locomotive, or stationary use.
That takes us to Detroit Diesel's first engine, which was the Series 71 engine platform, which
had a target application of construction, military, and standby generator use. The
Series 71 engine platform was available in three sizes at its initial release. You could
either get a three cylinder, a four cylinder, or a six cylinder engine. It's also worth noting
that the Series 71 wasn't just a shrunken down version of the two-stroke engine from the
Cleveland engine division, because shrinking down a massive engine down to something much
smaller creates a ton of issues, especially with lubrication. Luckily, Charles Kettering
is very persistent and he was able to figure out these issues and the first Series 71 engine
was produced in 1937. Moving back up to 1938, Detroit Diesel ramped up production and around
700 engines were sent to GM's Truck and Coach division. Then in 1939, the engine was sent to
various suppliers for use in their applications, one of which was the alice chambers tractor. Fast
forwarding a little bit, the Series 71 was used all across world war ii and by 1944 around
62,000 of these engines were produced. As you can imagine, producing that many engines in such
a short amount of time isn't particularly easy and at its peak Detroit Diesel could barely
keep up with demand, even after massively scaling their staff. Long story short, the nazis
were defeated and japan had the power of the sun dropped on them twice. With so many Series 71
engines being used in military applications, there are literally hundreds or potentially
thousands of them scattered all over the world in that old military equipment, since obviously
not everything is brought back after the war. As an interesting side note, i'd like to highlight
that all Series 71 engines are supercharged as a two-stroke diesel cannot naturally draw air in, so
some sort of forced induction is necessary for the engine to function. For those of you who are into
the hot rod world, this is where the famous 8-71 blower comes from. After the war in the 1950s,
Detroit Diesel introduced their new Series 110. What made this new engine Series so much different
than the Series 71 is the fact that it was only available in an inline six platform. Gone was
the idea of a platform that scaled up in size by adding cylinders and at nearly the same time they
also introduced the Series 53 engine. The 110 was marketed as a more powerful alternative to the 71
and it was used in construction equipment, rail cars, and more. After the war, railways really
started to fall off in popularity and importance, as on-road trucks began to boom in popularity
as the superior solution for transporting large amounts of goods. This coincides with the federal
aid highway act of 1956, which had a huge impact on in-city travel as well as interstate travel. As
such, transporting goods on the road became much easier and that's what partially created that
big boom of heavy-duty trucks. Unfortunately, Detroit Diesel was a little late to the party.
They really didn't shift their focus towards producing commercial truck engines until 1955 and
by that point Cummins had a massive lead on them, with the majority of commercial trucks using
Cummins engines. Funny to think that GM had the opportunity to buy Cummins back in the 1930s,
but ended up passing up on them. Still though, Detroit Diesel got to work offering their engines
to heavy duty manufacturers and they were very quickly adopted. Even with the new Series 53,
Detroit Diesel needed something more powerful to keep up with the Cummins engines. So, in 1957,
they introduced a new variant of the Series 71, but this time it featured a V configuration. It
was originally launched as the 6v71 which was a v6, but that was quickly followed up with the
8v71, 12v71, 16v71, and much later the 24v71. As compared to the original 71 Series, the v
configuration engines offered quite a bit more power, since displacement was massively increased
with all the additional cylinders. You have to remember that all 71 Series engines have the
same amount of displacement per cylinder, so 71 Series engines with more cylinders will always
have more displacement. Jumping forward to 1962, Cleveland Diesel was moved to GM's electromotive
division, which meant that Detroit Diesel was the only remaining partner of the GM Diesel Division.
But, in 1965, GM Diesel Division was reorganized into the Detroit Diesel Engine Division, and
by 1967 they were able to celebrate building their 1 millionth engine. From there, they merged
with another division under GM, but this time it was the Allison Division, and that division
was responsible for producing transmissions and gas turbines. They merged together and
created the Detroit Allison Division in 1970, and between 1970 and 1980 Detroit Allison grew
quite a bit and it started to take away some of the market share from Cummins. And they grew
even more once they dropped their Series 60 line of engines and in no time at all the Series 60
became the best-selling diesel engine for Class 8 trucks in North America. Fast forward to 1988,
shortly after the introduction of the Series 60, and Penske and GN began working together, and
ultimately created a new organization known as the Detroit Diesel Corporation, with Roger
Penske holding a majority ownership stake in it, and under his command, they grew at an even faster
rate. In 1993, they produced a whopping 20 million dollar net income and in the same year they were
listed on the New York stock exchange as the DDC. It was at this point that they controlled about
33 percent of the on highway truck engine market, with the majority of it still being held
by Cummins. It might not seem like it, but considering their on highway
market share was once 3 percent, growing to 33 is pretty insane. Through the
1990s, Detroit Diesel company continued to grow, now as a public company, and it wasn't until 2000
that there was really any change, which is when Daimler Chrysler acquired Detroit Diesel company
and placed it under their Daimler Truck of North America umbrella. Now, depending how strongly
you feel about a parent company's nationality, this move would have either made you really mad or
you would have been totally fine with it. Because Detroit Diesel, the company that had massively
helped in world war ii, the company that helped with the explosion of the commercial truck market,
the company that employed tens of thousands of US employees and was partially responsible for
America becoming such a superpower, was now owned by a German automaker. It's almost like a slap in
the face to those who believe in US made products. But, at the end of the day, at the time, Detroit
Diesel had outgrown their small roots. When 2005 rolled around, the Detroit Diesel corporation
made a big investment in their own company, spending over 300 million dollars to refurbish
their production plant and tooling. With the refurbishment, crazy growth, and insane progress
happening all at one time, they also released an entirely new engine line, which was the DD engine.
This includes engines like the DD13, DD15, DD15TC, and DD16, which are all still being produced today
and used on commercial trucks all over the world. Moving up to the current date, Detroit Diesel
Corporation has continued to grow and develop launching several new concepts along the
way to help with emissions compliance and ease of maintenance. Arguably, their
biggest development has been their blue tech emission systems. They've also expanded
their ideas past just commercial engines and as such renamed the company to "Detroit" to
show that they're more than just a diesel engine company. And as no surprise, they're pushing to
get into the electric commercial truck market. Whether or not you believe electric is the future
is a topic for a different time. It's pretty crazy to think that a small company from the 1930s
that blew up in the commercial truck market with their two-stroke diesel engines, is now moving
towards diversification and electrification. Today, they're offering parts a full lineup of
engines for commercial applications and they're also producing transmissions, safety systems,
and much more. If you guys enjoyed this video, be sure to please give it a big thumbs up. If
you think there's anything I forgot to add, anything you'd like to add, or anything
I said wrong, please let me know down in the comments below. While you're down there, get
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channel and i'll see you guys in the next one.
