What went wrong

[parkroyal2100]

Sorry, I do go on sometimes. I should add:

1. I don’t particularly hate old Triumphs (Bonnies, Tridents) or old British bikes in general - when I was a lot younger I always wanted a Norton Commando - they were good things… in their time (the early to mid 60s). But compared to Jap bikes in the 70s they were cynically under-engineered and over-sold.

2. I’m not a complete Japanese fan-boi. They make brilliant bikes and some excellent cars, but their trucks are - as a general rule - crap. I’ve driven enough of them to know that they may be cheap to buy, cheap to run and (within certain limits) reliable, but as a driving experience they’re ordinary at best, and typically 20 years behind the equivalent standard light to middleweight Euro product. They make cheap reliable lightweight trucks useful on distribution work, but anything more heavy duty than that they’re not all that flash. It’s instructive living in Oz, which being closer to Asia gets more Jap trucks than you lot do, and seeing who runs what on what work. When it comes to the real hard work, you won’t see a Japanese truck near it even though all three big marques (Isuzu, Hino and Mitsubishi) make heavier weight tractors - on the heavy hard stuff it’s all big Yank gear (KW, Freightliner, Mack, Western Star) or high-end H/D Volvos or Scanias.

Just think of the opportunities the British truck makers had and sold out on…

[wheel_nut]

ParkRoyal2100:
The comments on this thread make interesting reading. I started driving in the late 70s and only really got into it in the 80s, by which time much of the rot had already set in, or so it seems. Yes British wagons were around and being developed but - even though some of the products might have been very good, at least from an operator’s POV - from what I can see much of it was an attempt to try to catch up. There wasn’t that much wrong with say an ERF B series, but how was it going to compete with F10s, F12s, 141s and DAF 2800/3300s? The T45 was a brave attempt at bringing the British wagon into the 80s but - in typically British fashion - some novel ideas were screwed by poor execution.

What’s striking are the parallels between what happened to the British lorry industry and the painfully sad, lingering death of the British bike industry. The sheer number of marques that disappeared off the map in the 60s is a clue. Worse still, in the late 60s-early 70s just about all that was on offer were asthmatic, leaky pushrod OHV twins (Trident/ Rocket 3 excepted - they were asthmatic leaky OHV triples), ancient (wheezing, leaky etc) singles or slow two-smokes liek the BSA Bantam. These things might have been acceptable in the early to mid 60s cos that’s just about all there was anywhere (though except see BMW’s boxer twins, but they weren’t exaclty mass-market bikes), unless you wanted a scooter or a Bond 3-wheeler. The really telling aspect that didn’t emerge until it was too late was the complete blank space where forward-thinking product development should have been. People cite the 1969 Honda CB750 as the death knell, but the real killer was that the UK bike industry hadn’t been thinking and paying attention - if they had they could have responded. What the CB750 (and a mere 4 years later the Kwakka Z900) did was to wake the British public up to the fact that they no longer had to accept a quart of oil on the floor every week, crap Joe “Prince of Darkness” Lucas electrics, 4 speed gearboxes that imploded and 40 year old engine designs with no hope of much else. Yes I know early Jap bikes weren’t without problems, but if you’d been used to drum brakes, kick starters that took your shins off and oil everywhere, why wouldn’t you sit and goggle at the prospect of soemthign that went like [zb] off a stick, used no oil and had disc brakes, 5-speed gearboxes and a 4-cylinder OHC engine that felt like a well-oiled sewing machine?

That Triumph resurrected itself at all is a minor miracle, but the ironies are interesting. First the modern Triumph bike manufacturer was largely driven by one man (John Bloor) who had the foresight to knwo what customers - particularly British customers - wanted, not a committee of old stick-in-the-muds with no vision and no idea. The second irony is that Bloor and his team made no secret of the fact that they took half a dozen of the best selling bikes on the market (all Japanese), tore them apart and looked and sat and thought. Bloor may not have been a popular bloke (especially with some of the bike buying public who still wanted “traditional” Triumphs), but he at least had the wit to know that to copy and improve on the best there is (i.e. Jap bikes of the day) is not a sin - it’s smart. He and his team also had the determination to show the cynics (and there are few races more cynical than the British) that they (and Britain) could design and build something from scratch that wasn’t just successful but was a ■■■■ good thing to boot.

It’s a pity the British truck industry never had its own Bloor.

Agreed. We still have the knowhow and the technology, and even the engineers. Just look at the F1 circus, mainly British based and managed. The Birmingham motorcycle industry still holds a well deserved speed record. The Velocette Venom was the first and last motorcycle to average 100mph over 24 hours. The record was set in 1961 with a single cylinder 500cc engine using a team of 7 riders. This record 100.05mph is still unbroken by any bike of the same capacity, this gave the company a massive boost, yet the company, Velocette went out of business 10 years later.

Within 3 miles of my house is the resurrected Norton Factory who are churning out an amazing range of bikes, although they are struggling to keep up with orders and have increased their staff recently. An enviable position to be in I imagine for Stuart Garner.
Just reading their jobs advert they have taken on a new member of the management team called Kevin Bloor. I am not sure whether it is any relation to John Bloor of Triumph fame.

Here is Hoping.

[kr79]

I think you are all talking rot if carryfast was incharge we would be ok we would all be driving round in 1500 hp Bedford two strokes pulling 5 trailers at 200 ton on 50p a gallon diesel showing johnny forigener what for.
In the real world I suppouse it was complacintcy of they know no different so we will sell them the same crap but the world suddenly become a much smaller place in the 60s and 70s and we were caught out. We know foden ERF Atkinson AEC and scammell could build better as they offered very different trucks for oz and suchlike that could have been the basis for a truck to match the likes of the f88 and scania 110

[curnock]

britain led while the rest of the world followed in the first half of the last century,then they caught up and now we are being left in the rest of the worlds wake with not much left to look forward too on the horizon.and the government doesnt seem in much of a hurry to drum up some work !!
you could see it coming years ago when companies were sending business abroad,i’d think to myself this aint gonna last forever stripping all of britains best assets,then even the call centres went abroad,now that was grasping

[ramone]

I think a fresh approach was needed in the early 70s,British Leyland should have been broken up but the only problem was would these individual companies have survived? The likes of Scammell and AEC with the right investment must surely have had a chance (we can thank Lord Stokes for the demise of AEC) .ERF and Foden carried on with oldfashioned designs well into the 80s but probably were going in the right direction before being killed off ,Seddon Atkinson were much the same.The early Daf 85s werent up to much and i was never a fan of Mercs either.If Renault would have been British they wouldn`t be here now and probably Iveco too.I wonder who owns the rights to the old BL names and designs would it be Paccar?

[nb12]

ParkRoyal2100:
The comments on this thread make interesting reading. I started driving in the late 70s and only really got into it in the 80s, by which time much of the rot had already set in, or so it seems. Yes British wagons were around and being developed but - even though some of the products might have been very good, at least from an operator’s POV - from what I can see much of it was an attempt to try to catch up. There wasn’t that much wrong with say an ERF B series, but how was it going to compete with F10s, F12s, 141s and DAF 2800/3300s? The T45 was a brave attempt at bringing the British wagon into the 80s but - in typically British fashion - some novel ideas were screwed by poor execution.

What’s striking are the parallels between what happened to the British lorry industry and the painfully sad, lingering death of the British bike industry. The sheer number of marques that disappeared off the map in the 60s is a clue. Worse still, in the late 60s-early 70s just about all that was on offer were asthmatic, leaky pushrod OHV twins (Trident/ Rocket 3 excepted - they were asthmatic leaky OHV triples), ancient (wheezing, leaky etc) singles or slow two-smokes liek the BSA Bantam. These things might have been acceptable in the early to mid 60s cos that’s just about all there was anywhere (though except see BMW’s boxer twins, but they weren’t exaclty mass-market bikes), unless you wanted a scooter or a Bond 3-wheeler. The really telling aspect that didn’t emerge until it was too late was the complete blank space where forward-thinking product development should have been. People cite the 1969 Honda CB750 as the death knell, but the real killer was that the UK bike industry hadn’t been thinking and paying attention - if they had they could have responded. What the CB750 (and a mere 4 years later the Kwakka Z900) did was to wake the British public up to the fact that they no longer had to accept a quart of oil on the floor every week, crap Joe “Prince of Darkness” Lucas electrics, 4 speed gearboxes that imploded and 40 year old engine designs with no hope of much else. Yes I know early Jap bikes weren’t without problems, but if you’d been used to drum brakes, kick starters that took your shins off and oil everywhere, why wouldn’t you sit and goggle at the prospect of soemthign that went like [zb] off a stick, used no oil and had disc brakes, 5-speed gearboxes and a 4-cylinder OHC engine that felt like a well-oiled sewing machine?

That Triumph resurrected itself at all is a minor miracle, but the ironies are interesting. First the modern Triumph bike manufacturer was largely driven by one man (John Bloor) who had the foresight to knwo what customers - particularly British customers - wanted, not a committee of old stick-in-the-muds with no vision and no idea. The second irony is that Bloor and his team made no secret of the fact that they took half a dozen of the best selling bikes on the market (all Japanese), tore them apart and looked and sat and thought. Bloor may not have been a popular bloke (especially with some of the bike buying public who still wanted “traditional” Triumphs), but he at least had the wit to know that to copy and improve on the best there is (i.e. Jap bikes of the day) is not a sin - it’s smart. He and his team also had the determination to show the cynics (and there are few races more cynical than the British) that they (and Britain) could design and build something from scratch that wasn’t just successful but was a ■■■■ good thing to boot.

It’s a pity the British truck industry never had its own Bloor.

/rant

Nothing to be embaressed about there for Mr Bloor, BMWs S1000RR is the firms first real attempt at building a race replica road bike, and they absoloutly nailed it, it blew the competition into the weeds. They make no secret of the fact they looked at the best on the market at the time, the Suzuki GSXR1000K5, and tried to build it better.

[zb_anorak]

What went wrong? I do not believe it had much to do with the unions, Thatcher, British Leyland or any of the usual 1970s suspects. The demise of the British lorry industry started much earlier. Throughout the 1950s, most Continental manufacturers were building a full range of maximum-weight lorries with big, luxurious (for the time) sleeper cabs. These were proper production jobs, rather than one-off specials modified by outside coachbuilders. By 1960, I reckon at least a dozen builders had invested in expensive press tools to produce such cabs in large volumes, cost-effectively. In terms of marketing, they were all at it hammer and tongs, expanding their sales all over Europe, building up their dealer networks and customers.

It must have been clear to the managers of these companies that, after the War, the demand for vastly-improved long distance lorries in Europe would increase sufficiently to justify the investment, so invest they did. By shirking the engineering challenge and neglecting this huge market, The Brits were left behind. Leyland could have done it- it was possibly the strongest lorry-builder in the world in 1945- but it didn’t. A few sales of LAD-cabbed Beavers with tacked-on sleeper sections to the odd European customer in the early 60s was all it achieved, in the maximum-weight category.

The same forward-thinking firms then turned to engine development in the '60s, driving their outputs from 200 to 300+BHP in that ten year period. Along the way, they redesigned and improved the cabs again, all of the investment justified by sales in Europe. By the time the Continental builders got round to the quirky little British market, they were already so much bigger and stronger, in terms of sales volumes and engineering, that it was easy for them.

[ozzyhugh]

My own experiences include another factor in favour of European truck manufacturers and the demise of UK truck manufacturers.

During the 1970’s we entered the " Common Market " (pre-runner to E.U.) and there was great expansion in the transport industry during these strike ridden times into TIR European transport - it was the only way to keep busy and avoid bankruptcy - remember the three day week we had to contend with under labour strikes in UK ?

There was no back-up for UK trucks in Europe, whereas the Scania, Volvo & Mercedes marks had dealers and breakdown/repair facilities everywhere, usually with a 24 hour turn round on repairs to keep trucks running,(compare that to UK dealers) - UK truck makers were just not into " Europe " yet that was where the activity was !

(Apologies - I’d previously put this on the wrong thread)

[zb_anorak]

Spot on Ozzy. The setting-up of a comprehensive dealer network should have been the first step. Even if initial sales are slow, or the product is not exactly right for the market, taking a short-term loss by over-egging customer service is a surefire investment. I believe it was this that made Volvo and DAF the most successful foreign makes in the UK, in the '70s. If Leyland or AEC had done this all over Europe in the '50s, they would have acquired enough customers to tell them what products to build and the commercial confidence to develop them. The LAD cab may well have turned out as big and (relatively) fancy as those being fitted at the time by MAN, Mercedes et al.

Reading books and articles about makes such as Scania and Mercedes has convinced me that Leyland, AEC and Gardner were absolutely at the forefront of technology just after the War. Unfortunately, they seemed to lack the foresight or courage to take a committed plunge into the central European markets, leaving the bonanza to others.

[carryfast]

[zb]
anorak:
What went wrong? I do not believe it had much to do with the unions British Leyland or any of the usual 1970s suspects.

Fixed that.Thatcher did cause the loss of Britain’s manufacturing industry in general including the British truck manufacturing industry.Things still could have been turned around before 1978 (if) the customers for British trucks had come to their senses in time and had a clue what they wanted.

But Thatcher just finished the job that Callaghan started at which point the economy was zb’d with no way back and on the way to the bottom where it’s almost reached now.

www.trucknetuk.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=71451

[zb_anorak]

My argument is that What Went Wrong had nothing to do with anything that happened in the 1970s, with Governments or anything else. It also had nothing to do with the British market, which was a minor, peripheral part of Europe, with an aversion to progress in cab design and engine output. The British lorry builders’ demise was rooted in their failure to invest in gaining custom in a huge and rapidly-expanding market- Continental Europe.

This is not hindsight- an average business brain would have predicted, in 1945, that trade between the newly united countries would boom, and that the biggest boom industry would be transport. The beginnings of a motorway network were already in place, in Italy and Germany, and one only had to look across the Atlantic to see how goods were being moved across a 3,000 mile plot of land- lots of big, fast lorries, with good driver accommodation, would be needed. The Continental manufacturers all knew this, so they did whatever was required to feed the market, including buying technology from the existing leaders, Britain. Leyland, instead of investing in staying ahead, chose to make a fast buck by flogging their knowledge to Scania and DAF.

I speculate that the Continentals made their money back quickly enough in the '50s- off their sales volumes- that they could invest more heavily in R&D, and this is what enabled them to overtake Britain in engine design. The Leyland 500 and AEC V8 were both disasters; even the Power Plus in 1959 was a step back in reliability (according to some posts on this forum and books about Leyland’s history). I bet the average European manufacturer, in the '50s, employed far more engineering graduates per chassis built, than the typical British maker of the time.

[carryfast]

[zb]
anorak:
My argument is that What Went Wrong had nothing to do with anything that happened in the 1970s, with Governments or anything else. It also had nothing to do with the British market, which was a minor, peripheral part of Europe, with an aversion to progress in cab design and engine output. The British lorry builders’ demise was rooted in their failure to invest in gaining custom in a huge and rapidly-expanding market- Continental Europe.

This is not hindsight- an average business brain would have predicted, in 1945, that trade between the newly united countries would boom, and that the biggest boom industry would be transport. The beginnings of a motorway network were already in place, in Italy and Germany, and one only had to look across the Atlantic to see how goods were being moved across a 3,000 mile plot of land- lots of big, fast lorries, with good driver accommodation, would be needed. The Continental manufacturers all knew this, so they did whatever was required to feed the market, including buying technology from the existing leaders, Britain. Leyland, instead of investing in staying ahead, chose to make a fast buck by flogging their knowledge to Scania and DAF.

I speculate that the Continentals made their money back quickly enough in the '50s- off their sales volumes- that they could invest more heavily in R&D, and this is what enabled them to overtake Britain in engine design. The Leyland 500 and AEC V8 were both disasters; even the Power Plus in 1959 was a step back in reliability (according to some posts on this forum and books about Leyland’s history). I bet the average European manufacturer, in the '50s, employed far more engineering graduates per chassis built, than the typical British maker of the time.

You need to also throw into that the advantage which the foreign manufacturers had in customer demands in their all important domestic markets.To put it simply we had loads of operators like Bewick still calling for Gardner powered Atkis well into the 1970’s. While the foreign operators were calling on their domestic industry to produce modern,comfortable,well powered Scanias,Volvos and DAF’s so they had a head start in development and an existing home market to make the investment in development of better wagons viable.

The lag that it all caused in the development of British power units was irrelevant because all the British manufacturers were able to circumvent the problem by using American componentry which was as,if not more,advanced than European in terms of power outputs and reliability.

It was the retarded customers in the home market that caused the lag in British truck development which (could have been) dealt with by large scale import of American technology which was,and still is as,if not more,advanced in terms of efficiency, power outputs and reliability,as the continental products were.The problem was that,unlike in Australia and New Zealand,British buyers wouldn’t have bought a 300-400 hp locally built Kenworth,even if it was offered at the time when it mattered.Which is why the Australians ended up with a truck manufacturing industry at the time when were losing ours.

So the home manufacturers were stuck with a retarded time warped home market while the foreign makers were able to cover their development costs in their home markets and then just managed to get the bonus of exports to us in addition when our customers finally came to their senses.Which was too late for ours unfortunately.

[zb_anorak]

Carryfast:
It was the retarded customers in the home market that caused the lag in British truck development

No. The crux of the argument is that there was a much bigger, less “retarded” market for long-distance lorries the other side of the channel, developing from 1945 onwards. The GB manufacturers did not have to (largely) ignore it. They chose to do so.

The retardation of the industry was not caused by the GB customers applying the brakes, it was the GB manufacturers not bothering to press the other pedal hard enough. Do metaphors carry any weight around here?!

[carryfast]

[zb]
anorak:

Carryfast:
It was the retarded customers in the home market that caused the lag in British truck development

No. The crux of the argument is that there was a much bigger, less “retarded” market for long-distance lorries the other side of the channel, developing from 1945 onwards. The GB manufacturers did not have to (largely) ignore it. They chose to do so.

The retardation of the industry was not caused by the GB customers applying the brakes, it was the GB manufacturers not bothering to press the other pedal hard enough. Do metaphors carry any weight around here?!

Unfortunately the inconvenient truth what happened in the Australian and New Zealand markets shows that to be wrong.The fact is there’s no way that the European markets would have ever deserted there own local maufacturers for British exports and there’s no way that Britain could have developed trucks of the required capabilities without having the demand in the domestic market to have made the change and development of competitive trucks viable.

Having been involved in truck manufacturing at the time what was needed was domestic customers here who were prepared to order what the Australian and New Zealand markets were ordering,instead of zb Gardner powered day cabbed Atkis etc,because it was a case of use locally made trucks based on US designs or die.Which is why Australia has had a truck manufacturing industry since the time when we started losing ours.

[zb_anorak]

Carryfast:
Unfortunately the inconvenient truth what happened in the Australian and New Zealand markets shows that to be wrong.The fact is there’s no way that the European markets would have ever deserted there own local maufacturers for British exports and there’s no way that Britain could have developed trucks of the required capabilities without having the demand in the domestic market to have made the change and development of competitive trucks viable.

Between 1945 and 1965, central European markets were fair game to any company with the courage to invest. German firms were selling in France and vice-versa. Leyland, Foden and AEC all had a few sales in some of the markets, but did not do it well enough. Even latecomers could succeed- the Swedes did not enter the fray seriously until 1963/4, with the LB76 and F88. The British builders had the strongest hand from the beginning; they just chose not to play it.

[carryfast]

[zb]
anorak:

Carryfast:
Unfortunately the inconvenient truth what happened in the Australian and New Zealand markets shows that to be wrong.The fact is there’s no way that the European markets would have ever deserted there own local maufacturers for British exports and there’s no way that Britain could have developed trucks of the required capabilities without having the demand in the domestic market to have made the change and development of competitive trucks viable.

Between 1945 and 1965, central European markets were fair game to any company with the courage to invest. German firms were selling in France and vice-versa. Leyland, Foden and AEC all had a few sales in some of the markets, but did not do it well enough. Even latecomers could succeed- the Swedes did not enter the fray seriously until 1963/4, with the LB76 and F88. The British builders had the strongest hand from the beginning; they just chose not to play it.

If that’s true then the roads of Germany would have been full of French trucks like Saviems and Berliets etc and French roads would have been full of Mercedes etc and the Swedes would’nt have been buying Scanias and FIAT wouldn’t have been producing loads of trucks for the Italian market.

If Britain had a strong hand in 1945 then it wouldn’t have needed loads of Diamond T tank transporters and most sensible heavy haulage companies all over the country wouldn’t have been using them for years afterwards because the British heavy truck capability of the time wasn’t up to the job.

From that point on the gap between US trucks and British ones just got larger not smaller with the 1970’s being the make or break point and that’s why Australia has based it’s truck manufacturing industry ever since on Kenworths just like we should/could have done.If only the domestic customers would have bought them instead of zb Gardner powered Atkis etc

[fodenway]

A couple of points that seem to have been missed are that Britain still had a network of mainly ancient roads, unsuitable for either high speeds or large vehicles until the motorway system reached a reasonable state of development in the 1980’s. Add to this the restrictive legislation covering lorry speeds and weights in force at the time, and there was little or no incentive for our manufacturers to improve their products. We still had a relatively large overseas market in the colonies that wasn’t yet threatened in any major way by “foreigners”, and we had decent sales in Scandinavia and the Low Countries, possibly a legacy of wartime loyalty towards us in those countries.

[carryfast]

fodenway:
A couple of points that seem to have been missed are that Britain still had a network of mainly ancient roads, unsuitable for either high speeds or large vehicles until the motorway system reached a reasonable state of development in the 1980’s. Add to this the restrictive legislation covering lorry speeds and weights in force at the time, and there was little or no incentive for our manufacturers to improve their products. We still had a relatively large overseas market in the colonies that wasn’t yet threatened in any major way by “foreigners”, and we had decent sales in Scandinavia and the Low Countries, possibly a legacy of wartime loyalty towards us in those countries.

The British motorway network existed more or less the same during the 1970’s as in most of the 1980’s.Truck motorway speeds here were actually higher then than today and it’s power to weight ratios and comfort levels that were the important thing and which were lacking in the British designs which were based on the requirements of the British customers at the time,the combination of which would have made a figure of around 10 bhp + per tonne and some decent more comfortable cab designs just as,if not more,beneficial for efficiency,as today while the actual sizes of trucks haven’t really changed much since then.However there’s no real difference in size,then or now,between using a typical US type cab over design or a euro one to pull a euro type trailer.

We effectively lost our export markets in the colonies as soon as the Australian truck manufacturing industry started building locally produced Kenworths from the beginning of the 1970’s.Ironically the New Zealand conditions were,at that time,and probably still are,more like those of the pre motorway era British road network than the large motorway networks around Europe and UK,which shows that US trucks were ( still are) as happy on single carriageway type roads as Interstates and in the mountains as on the flat,just like in their home market.

It’s no surprise that it’s that Australian example of continuous development of US type trucks not British ones that proved from the start and to date to be the only real practical effective competition to the European types in a type of market where both are sold together.It’s just that like the European buyers the colonial ones were far more advanced in their thinking as to what they wanted compared to their British counterparts.

[kr79]

Could also be as British buyers were looking for more powerful trucks in the late 60s early 70s they were offered things like the AEC V8 which had the potential to be great but leyland thought it was acceptable for the paying customer to be a guinea pig for reliability trials. Grabber just nailed on another two cylinders and had about a two year waiting list coupled to most companies attitude of we will sell you what we want when we want.
This at the time the o licence system opened up the industurys to pretty much anyone. Those fledgling small hauliers at that time like bewick and even his mate fast Eddie looking to expand and perhaps having no joy with the big boys of Britain were welcomed with open arms by the likes of scania and daf.
If we look at the two who lasted longest foden and erf it was the American driveline that saved them the ■■■■■■■ fuller Rockwell was the simple well proven modern alternative to Gardner David brown kirkstall but the lack of cab devolpment let them down and they never went to Europe like the continental truck builders expanded across there.

[gingerfold]

Manufacturing industry in post-war Britain of the 1940’s was clapped out due to wartime demands. There was no money to invest because the country was virtually bankrupt. The government’s policy was export or die to bring foreign currency into the exchequer. All we had to offer our export markets were re-hashed prewar designs made in labour intensive inefficient manufacturing plants. Our main export markets were the countries of the old British Empire and little effort was made to find new export markets. Leyland and AEC were the only Britsish manufacturers at the quality heavy truck end of the market with the potential and capacity to have a global presence if their products were right. (Such as ERF, Atkinson, and Foden were all small manufacturers whose annual chassis build numbers were counted in hundreds, not thousands). By the late 1950s Leyland and AEC (still independent companies) had started to make some inroads into the European markets, sometimes with dealer networks, but usually as joint collaberations with other smaller European manufacturers. AEC in particular, through Jim Slater (later a well known City whizz kid financier) HAD identified Europe as the great potential market and AEC established relatively successful operations in France and the Benelux countries in particular. Come the 1962 Leyland takeover of AEC and as has been discussed before on this forum we all know what happened thereafter.

As to Australiia until the 1960’s many British makes were the preferred choice until once again Leyland messed up big time. It is a pertinent point to make that as a vast country with a population of only 22 million people its requirements (and vehicle numbers) are totally different to the requirements of a country like the UK with 60 million people and a small area to cover. It stands to reason that American designs for a similar vast region and road network will be better suited for Australia.