Saviem's fan club (Part 1)

Couple more for you John…bit over design weight …perhaps…
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Evening all,

Well its my “bliss time” , the Isle of Man TT is over, and only the Manx to come, but now the Tour de France cycle race kicks off…and how I regret my aged muscles!..Mark Cavendish wins the first stage, and at last gets a Yellow Jersey to add to those so many other Jerseys in his collection…what an incredible sportsman, (and his modest speech at the finish at Utah Beach today, and his acknowledgement of the sacrifice of so many lives from an earlier generation, to free Europe, really shows the contrast to the over paid apes that our national media puts forward as “sports heroes”)…And for me racing over, (now with a better surface), roads that I know so well…and tomorrow up to Cherburg, again familiar roads for so many of us.

I’m a bit behind the pace, apologies…Pete, (30.06 16), no that is not my Star, that is a psv chassis, and it looks to be leaving Guy`s Cape Town South Africa operation. Sydney Guy had a fascination with the South African market…and in time it would be the death knell of Guy as an independent manufacturer…as it was with the other Wolverhampton manufacturer, Star Motors. But in the late 20s both Star, and Guy sold well in South Africa.

Fergie, superb pictures as ever, but that double bottom Saviem of 30.06.16, well there is a bit of a story to those…

Dipsters right, that was one of many operated by Construction giant SGE, (Societie General d`Enterprises), on the 1970s reconstruction of Nice Airport…right at the end of the Promenade des Anglais, about 7 km from the town centre. SGE, had sprung from Marseille based Grandes Traveaux Publics, founded back in 1891, (amongst whose projects was the construction of the Aswan Dam in Egypt)…and today the Groupe still exists…

The proposal was to construct a new airport and runways , one of 2570 metres length, and one of 2960 metres, on a total site of 300 plus hectares…the only problem…most of the proposed site was the Mediterranean ocean!..Simple, (and so French ), solution…remove one of the foothills from behind Nice, and pop it in the ocean!..and to do so meant some fairly avant garde engineering, because Nice, Cote d`Azur, did not wish for its ambience to be disturbed!

So tunnels were dug, and haul roads constructed to allow the passage of the excavated mountain to pass, un-noticed by the well heeled populous!..and pass it did on a night and day stream of double bottom outfits… wearing both Saviem, and Berliet badges…but what odd balls they really were…

For Berliet the SGE tender presented few problems, already the revised V8 was available, (thanks to the design input from the ex Unic engineers, who simply did not wish to relocate to Turin), sitting under the magnificent KB 24 cab, and a tried and proven hub reduction double drive bogie , it was a simple move to fit the FPOS double reduction front drive axle from the Bourg en Bresse built military side to the TRH 350…a stable and powerful 150, (plus), tonner…and there was Berliets 6x6…

This tender came along prior to the 1975 grouping of Saviem, and Berliet…and already Saviem were making inroads into Berliets traditional “Chantier”, (Construction), market. This with the pure badge engineered, German built MAN 4x4, 6x4, and 6x6 ranges. The intention was to deepen the ranges available, and to that end the potentially available licence to build the Willeme TG range of 6x4, 8x4, and 8x8 heavy haulers was to be evaluated. But already our German and Austrian friends were offering the Austrian built OAF 6x4, and 6x6 vehicles for re badging. And those were the vehicles that were pictured in Fergies post. 6X6 both V10s and V8s with 300 plus hp, ZF boxes, and MAN/OAF back ends. Badged as Saviems, and expected to be the first of many for the French market. These big girls were rated at a nominal 150 tonnes gtw, and gave, (a rather academic), payload advantage over the Berliets of two tonnes!..academic in the terms of 120 tonnes plus payload, (dependent upon material density and weight).

I seem to remember writing a bit about these lorries and their side tipping trailers sometime back…so I will not repeat myself here, but they really were some magnificent vehicles, and did they work, loaded by both Marion, and Plessey Belle Ville produced Poclain face shovels, (25 tonne bucket loads), they all ran at a minimum 150 tonnes gross. Both ourselves and Berliet used this construction project, and our respective equipment “success” to great effect, SGE were great hosts, and the delights of Nice, and nearby Monaco added effect to great marketing opportunities.

But nature sometimes does not like what man does…on the 16. 10. 1979, Nice and Antibes suffered a Tsunami, a wave of 3/3.5 metres which swept 150 metres inland, there was a material slide from the airport construction site of, (an estimated), 10 million sq metres of material into the Var delta, which at the construction site had a 30 degree slope. Underwater cables 120 km away were breached, and over 20 people lost their lives.

Was the Tsunami, created by the material slipping down the slope? Or was it , and the slippage from the site, as a result of a massive undersea landslide? The answer is still the subject of learned debate…

Nice, Cote dAzur Airport is now Frances second largest Airport, serving both the Cote d`Azur, and Monaco…(via a non stop shuttle of ever more exotic Helicopters)! If you have flown into there, or ever do so, as your plane inevitably turns to approach from the seaward side, you may marvel at the 300 plus hectares of flat land projecting out into the sea,

Its a beautiful Airport, flooded with sunlight, and especially in the new 2nd Terminal, but spare a thought for the men, and machines that created that land…and the consequences that befell that wonderful part of France…

And as you walk through the terminal, look for the simple plaque fixed to the wall, celebrating, and remembering the brave men of the United States Army, 597, and 517 Parachute Engineering Company, who de-mined the original Nice Airport and enabled the Liberation of Nice on August 28th 1944, and lost their lives in so doing.

What happened to the equipment…Saviem, or Berliet…well some went, (inevitably), to Africa, some to construction operators in France…but personally I have never seen one of the Berliet 6x6 TRHs after seeing them on that job…but I did see a very rusty OAF/Saviem 6x6 in a yard outside of Avignon back in the 90s…now that would have been worth saving…

Cheerio for now.