Did any of you ever run with Bob Paggiani and his Scammell S26 (nick-named The Scud) in the early '90s? I’m trying to find out what engine it had. Some magazines / books report it as Cummins NTE 350 and others Cummins NTE 400.
It could well have been a 400, as Scammell were turning out S26s with 400 lumps in the late '80s. Or it might have been a 350 uprated to 400. Either way I’d like to know!
Kings Heavy Haulage had an almost identical one with a 400 in it. That, like The Scud was a cancelled order. Perhaps they were the same order!
Looks like 26-35 on the badge. 26 ton/ 350bhp. Probably wouldn’t tell the difference between 350/400bhp with the 14 litre Cummins. I drove a Leyland Roadtrain with a 320 in it. There was about 6 in the fleet, and one 290, and it pulled at least as good as the 320’s.
Yes, thanks. I hadn’t noticed the badge - I’ve only just acquired this image and it’s the only one that shows the badge clearly enough to read! 32.35 is a bit of a clue. There still remains the possibility that it was uprated, fettled or tweaked to 400, as some other S26s were.
(Not sure you can compare the 290 / 320 with the 350 / 400, as the 320, as you say, didn’t perform any better than the 320 but the 320 was more sophisticated and more frugal. You may still be right, as it was in the end the same 14-litre lump in all cases!)
It seems that I wasn’t the only one doing Middle East with a Eurostar! Though I notice that’s the later one with the Cursor electronic engine so it won’t have a Twinsplitter like mine did
And here’s Hooper-man’s Transcon, which had a 13-sp Fuller in it.
In the 80s, Hungarocamion was the largest haulier company in Europe, serving the demands of Hungarian foreign trade via the ports of Hamburg / Rotterdam / Koper all the way to Eastern European destinations. The company also participated in the implementation of special tasks, such as the delivery of various service trucks with different bodies from the factory to Baghdad Abu Ghraib Customs during the first Iraqi-Iranian war.
Hungarian drivers completed the task, one group from the factory to Budapest, where the first service was performed, and the second group covered the nearly 4000km distance on axles for the Iraqi army. While Baghdad Saddam International Airport was operating, the drivers traveled back to Budapest with MALÉV flights for the next task. There were drivers who completed 3 trips per month, during my stay there were months when more than 1000 vehicles arrived in Abu Ghraib. After the closure of Baghdad airport, our drivers were sent home by buses via Damascus or Amman airports. It was a trying task for everyone. 40 years later, three years ago, I was on a personal nostalgia trip to Iraq and I often saw the still-working orange trucks we had brought there all over the country.2025-07-21T22:00:00Z
One of the reasons for my surprise was that I seem to remember that Saudi wouldn’t let ‘commie bloc’ lorries transit. Did the Kuwaiti and Iranian contingent just steer clear of Saudi then?
you are right, at that time Saudi did not give entry visas to citizens of the so-called Eastern Bloc. Kuwaiti registration and Arab drivers temporarily solved the problem…
Fascinating. Thank you for that. It rather solves the question I’ve never been able to answer about older drivers’ occasional sightings of Hungarocamion trailers in the Gulf area. Great stuff!
