The titan from Japan
01/27/2026
After Krupp-Südwerke had smoothed out the front end of its trucks in 1954, the old "pointed noses" experienced their second spring in the land of the rising sun. There, Nippon Diesel Industries had built its first two-stroke compression-ignition engine under license from Essen in 1936 and launched its first in-house design three years later.
In January 1955, a new generation of diesel engines with direct current scavenging appeared, which would later give the company, which had been operating under the name Nissan-Minsei since 1953, its name: UD - Uniflow Diesel. Technically now related to Detroit designs, the new seven-and-a-half-tonner followed unmistakably German models visually.
In 1957, the T75 with a 150 hp four-cylinder engine was joined by the three-axle 6TW with a six-cylinder engine, whose 230 hp and 880 Nm could carry or tow up to ten tons. This meant that it even outperformed the Krupp Titan with a maximum load of eight tons - even during the construction period. The last two-stroke diesel was not built at UD until 1969.
