Folk keep harping on about poor performance but I have never found a driver who thought that? Same goes for the Rootes TS3 of course, drivers loved them. Don’t forget that when it was originally being fitted into trucks the 20mph limit was still in place, later upped to 30 of course, and gross weights were much lower. Admittedly the four/five speed gearbox was inadequate when weights were increased but Fodens soon sorted that out. As weights increased then Fodens inreased the performance as well. Other makers fitted Meadows engines and even they couldn’t break into the Gardner/Leyland engine market in a big way, Dorman were the same in the lighter ranges as Perkins had that pretty much sown up and Dorman failed. I’ve often thought that if Gardner hadn’t diverted away from marine and industrial to making an engine specifically for road vehicles just what engines would makers such as ERF, Atkinson, Guy etc etc have fitted into their trucks and at least Foden’s had the foresight to produce their own power unit to compensate for the possibility of Gardners being unable to keep up owing to the demand from other makers and leave them in short supply.
No matter what you may think of Foden they were never shy of trying different things. Plastic cabs (first in the UK), tilt cabs,(first in the UK) half cabs, crane carriers, dumpers, a splitter gearbox with more than five or six gears, the choice of around half a dozen different cabs at one time when other makers probably offered only one or two, the Twin Load, one offs etc etc. Some were succesfull, others were not, but they were never afraid of trying. Also they made virtually everything ‘in house’ so were not reliant on outside suppliers.
Pete.