MAHA Brand Guidelines: A 1968 Haldenwang Brake Tester & an Allgäu Foundation Company

A brake tester built for a village workshop.

MAHA began with a single machine built for a single garage. In 1968, the trade magazine asp Auto Service Praxis reported in 2009, Winfried Rauch and his business partner Josef Schilling developed a roller brake tester for Schilling’s motor workshop in Haldenwang, a village in the Allgäu, in the south of Bavaria. The first prototype was called the JW 1, for Josef and Winfried, and its rollers were cut from two discarded gas cylinders. According to the magazine, someone bought that prototype before it could be installed, and the same happened with the second; production of test stands grew one machine at a time.

The company was founded in 1969. The company’s own history describes something that “began in 1968 in a garage” and became a two-man business in 1969, and it dates its first production building to 1971. German Wikipedia gives the same founders and founding year for the core company, MAHA Maschinenbau Haldenwang GmbH & Co. KG, whose name joins the machine-building trade to the village.

Growth came quickly. asp reported that MAHA had 42 employees in 1983 and 135 five years later, that work on a new headquarters in Haldenwang began at the end of 1988, and that the payroll had reached 577 by 1998. The company dates that building, still its main production site, to 1989. The magazine also described a firm that moved from mechanical parts to electronics, brought welding robots into production and organised its own delivery fleet, while keeping its regional roots: the 40th anniversary in 2009 was marked with a party for staff, families, former employees and dealers.

From brake rollers to test lanes and lifts.

The brake tester remained the core product. By 2009, asp reported, MAHA had built more than 54,000 brake test stands, and their model name still echoed the first prototype: they were called IW, the J having become an I as the company went international. Over the years MAHA added performance dynamometers, chassis testers, lifting equipment, exhaust-emission analysers and air-conditioning service units, the magazine wrote.

Several product families came through acquisitions, which the company lists in its timeline. In 1998 it took over Hetra International, a maker of mobile column lifts that grip the wheels, and in 2001 it bought SLiFT, a maker of pit jacks and in-ground lifts. In 1999 it laid the foundation stone of MAHA USA in Pinckard, Alabama, which German Wikipedia also records. In 2005 it set up MAHA-AIP for powertrain test benches and, the company says, sold it in 2017. In 2021 it took over EWR Messgeräte, a maker of measuring devices for emission testing, and ATT Automotive Testing Technologies, a maker of inspection equipment. German Wikipedia lists the group’s brands as MAHA, SLiFT, HETRA and ATT.

Large public orders shaped its reputation. asp cited the delivery of more than 8,000 ASM emission test stands to the United States and the fitting-out of 189 inspection stations for TÜVTÜRK, Turkey’s vehicle-inspection operator, within twelve months; the company puts that 2007 order at 459 test lanes across those 189 locations. Today its website groups the range into brake testing, lifting, vehicle testing, performance measurement, emission measurement and headlight testing, and German Wikipedia names its customers as vehicle makers, inspection organisations and workshops for cars, commercial vehicles, motorcycles and farm machinery.

Design and documentation.

Garage equipment is sold to people who already know what a lift or a tyre changer should do, so the makers’ own material tends to show the machines at work. The usual picture is a two-post lift with a car raised to head height in a clean, well-lit workshop, the columns and arms set against pale floors and painted walls, with a technician underneath for scale.

Wheel-service equipment has its own look. Tyre changers and wheel balancers are typically shown as compact cabinets in strong body colours — reds, blues and greys recur across the trade — with a wheel mounted and the controls in view. Alignment systems are often shown through their targets or sensors clamped to the wheels and a screen nearby, and brake testers through rollers set into the workshop floor.

Much of the selling happens face to face. Makers present their ranges at trade fairs such as Automechanika in Frankfurt and at national shows, and most sell through dealer and installer networks rather than directly, so dealer locators, installer programmes and training centres feature prominently on their websites. Certification marks and named standards also appear often; Rotary Lift, for example, says many of its lifts carry the certification mark of the Automotive Lift Institute, a trade body formed in 1945.

The makers in this guide include family firms, private companies and brands held inside larger industrial groups. This guide sets out what can be checked about each — who founded it, who owns it and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A foundation company in the Allgäu.

Ownership changed in a way that is unusual for a machine builder. At the end of March 2009, asp reported, Winfried Rauch, then the owner, stepped back from day-to-day management, as he had announced. In 2011 the company was placed in a foundation, according to both German Wikipedia and the company, which says this secures its future over the long term; a company press release from its 50th anniversary in 2019 said the change meant profits since then have gone directly back into the business. German Wikipedia says the group has had its present structure since 1 April 2013, with MAHA Group GmbH at the top and the production company beneath it, both in Haldenwang. The website now names the operating company MAHA SE & Co. KG.

The company describes itself in confident terms. It says it employs more than 1,000 people, makes its whole range on more than 100,000 square metres at its two production sites in Haldenwang and Pinckard, works with about 140 trading partners and has customers in some 150 countries. It describes a clear commitment to “Made in Germany” and says it has been named a “World Market Leader” in workshop and vehicle testing equipment, in 2016 and again in 2018; its 2019 release said that ranking is drawn up by the University of St. Gallen. It runs the MAHA Academy for training and a service centre. For a show-piece, it points to a 31,000-square-metre Audi centre in Dubai fitted with 86 of its lifts alongside test lanes and diagnostic products.

For a design guide, MAHA shows how a single machine and a village name can carry an engineering brand across five decades. Compare Corghi, an Italian maker of tyre changers and workshop equipment, and HELLA, a German automotive supplier with a long family history. For this guide we use a deep blue, steel grey and white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep MAHA’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.