Article by Wobbe Reitsma removed following his copyright concerns. Robert
Living in the NGC 420 would have been tough, of course: with all that glazing to the side and rear of the cab, insulation against cold nights would have been poor especially as night-heaters were not generally available in ‘seventies trucks and Jerry Cooke reports that none arrived in Jeddah with one. A contributor called ‘Harry’, blogging on Trucknet, submitted a picture of an NGC 420 pulling a tilt and wrote, ‘I drove this heap for a Swiss outfit. Always broke down in the middle of winter. You could freeze to death with the bad insulation on the cab. The main lump, ■■■■■■■■ was good but it rattled to pieces. All the accessories — compressor, water pump, alternator, even clutches — wore out quickly. They couldn’t stand up to hard wear. The stupid thing had great big contact breakers instead of fuses. I spent days in mid-winter without the engine or night heater working.’ No love lost there, then! Even that 1975 Euro Test in TRUCK frowned upon any glass in the rear of the cab. One can only speculate about the reason for that lower window in the rear of the cab. The only reason I can think of is to enable heavy-haulage drivers to see better behind them. Initially at least, the 7MW cab was provided with curtains to the rear and draw-down blinds to the front and sides. I never found blinds to be satisfactory in a truck. I always fitted my set of tasselled oriental curtains that I bought in Tangiers, to any truck I spent time in. These are not to everyone’s liking, visually, but they beat everything else for insulation and privacy. Driving any truck in the snow with relatively primitive insulation and no night-heater was hard work. Anyone who has driven a truck across Bulgaria and Turkey in winter will know how appalling and downright life-threatening the conditions can be.
Nonetheless this dignified lorry had real character and it made a special contribution to the history of the TIR-trail with its standard factory virtues of the tilting sleeper cab, and the well-proven ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ drive-train. After all, 335 bhp was a lot of horses in those days and it is easy to forget how adequate 335-power was (the fully-freighted 305-powered Scania I once drove to Turkey and back did the job admirably). If I were asked to choose a ‘seventies-built truck in road-worthy condition for a last nostalgic long trip, I would ask for an ERF NGC 420 without hesitation, if only for the sheer pleasure of driving it. Robert 
The NGC 420 Middle-East ‘special’ was a pre-curser to the ‘Overlander’ cab and it represented cutting-edge British technology but ERF didn’t appear determined to compete in this field. In addition to those four supplied to the Vijore group, one of ERF’s demonstrators, JLG 35N appears to have been a ‘special’ as it had breather pipes, air-con and a visor. During 1972, the year in which the NGC 420 was being developed with its Motor Panels Mark 4 cab, a long-haul version of their new Mark 5 cab called the ‘Trans-continental’ was presented at the Earls Court motor show. Truck manufacturers could choose their own grille design. It had bunk beds, a shaver socket and a wash basin with taps and hot and cold water. Ford is believed to have shown an interest in it, but ended up choosing the Berliet cab instead for its ‘Transcontinental’ model. It’s not clear whether Ford acquired this name from Motor Panels. The 7MW cab probably benefitted from this programme. Volvo was already making Middle-East spec F88s, with an F12 version on the horizon (the one I drove had a built-in twin spirit stove); Leyland was making its own Marathon ‘special’ for British Road Services’ dedicated Tehran route; DAF was making its ‘Super-continental’ for Middle-East work; Bedford was developing a Middle-East spec TM ‘Long Haul’; Saviem had its fabulously named ‘Orient Express’ and Ford had a Middle-East ‘Long-haul pack’ spec ‘Transcontinental’— all of them available with double-drive and left-hand-drive. In short, ERF was up there with the lads, but alas not many were produced and I have often wondered whether ERF missed a trick here. I imagine that they must at least have considered marketing a double-drive NGC 422 tractor as a Middle-East special. They might then have left the ‘European’ sobriquet with the old 5MW and named it instead: the ‘Middle-Eastern’, or with historical hindsight the ‘Trans-Arabian’. Double-drive would still have been useful then, as parts of the Gulf route were un-metalled when ERFs roamed the sands. Nonetheless double-drive then, as now, was an expensive luxury on trunk roads. To be fair, quite a number of such beasts were supplied in B-series form for Saudi ‘internals’ afterNGC 420s ceased production; after which the rare C-series LHD ‘Overlander’ appeared in ‘82. It was not uncommon during the ‘seventies and ‘eighties for operators and owner-drivers on the Middle-East run to use adapted 6x4 heavy-haulage tractors. One can only imagine what an impressive sight the Shamara short wheelbase 6x4 would have made with a visor and Kaisor added, and an ocean-going tilt behind it!
In the event no NGC 420 ‘specials’ were produced with double-drive, high roof conversions, camel-bars, top-spots, ■■■■■■■ 350 lumps, night-heaters, lagged fuel-lines, diff-locks, wide steers or blanked out rear windows so far as I am aware. In any case, flat-top ‘seventies long-haulers had a charm of their own and Estepe style roof-conversions, along with roof-mounted air-kits had yet to become fashionable. In 1976, most long-haul ‘special’ units really had nothing much that an ERF NGC 420 didn’t already have. Even ERF’s 5MW ‘European’ could compete with these players in the long-haul arena, and some made it to the Middle East in any case. To put things into perspective, some British drivers were running down to the Middle East at that time in AEC Mandators, Guy Big-Js, Atkinson Borderers, Bedford KMs, ScammellRoutemans, and ERF LVs with just day-cabs and a plank across the engine hump for a bed. At least the NGC 420 was purpose-built, like a Volvo or a Scania. Robert
TAP-line
Trans Arabia’s NGC 420s regularly hauled road-trains the 800 miles or so coast-to-coast along the TAP-line from Jeddah on the Red Sea to Dammam on the Gulf where they had another depot and operating base. That TAP-line route, incidentally, is a demanding road with little to interest the eye. I remember on one trip driving down the arrow-straight road, watching yellow clouds of sand and dust swirl and snake across the road in mysterious eddies before me, reducing visibility. Sand and dust blew progressively into a fog and headlights of oncoming trucks appeared startlingly at the last moment, though most of them were unlit. Then the daylight dimmed to an eerie, dark orange glow. Fine, powdery dust infiltrated the cab by every conceivable means. The temperature rose sharply and soon huge drops of rain began to fall — a rarity in the desert. Before long the windscreen was a mass of smeared mud. Visibility dropped almost to zero. After several minutes the storm abated quite suddenly, and bright sunshine was restored. It was the first time I’d ever heard of a mud storm, let alone driven in one. When I stopped to make tea in the desert, I observed that the front of my truck was caked in muddy sand. ERF appears to have been experimenting with dirt deflection during the NGC 420 production period. Significantly, dirt deflectors appeared on the windscreen pillars, presumably to keep the side windows clean and the mirrors visible. This was clearly an issue as almost every picture I can find of NGC 420s show these deflectors in place. Some of them were painted a different colour from the cab and one example, on Trans Arabia fleet number 108 (a ■■■■■■■ 290 / Fuller 13-sp machine), rather charmingly featured traditional Arab truck art in the form of a simply repeated colourful design. Dirt deflectors also appeared on the upper leading side edges of the protruding front grille to keep the door handles clean. Trans Arabia’s no. 142 featured these. All theNGC 420s in the Belgian Van Steenbergen fleet had them placed much lower down the grille edge, perhaps to keep the driver’s steps clean. Robert
It says in one of those scans that the 7MW was actually available with a range of engines, including the usual ■■■■■■■ options and the Gardner 240, yet nearly all of the examples built seem to have been Cu335-engined. What was going on there? Why did ERF not sell lots of 250-290bhp 7MWs?
As I explained in an earlier post, this ‘availability’ appears only to have been on paper. In practice, those who wanted the lighter, cheaper option simply bought the 5MW version. Robert
Article by Wobbe Reitsma removed, following his copyright concerns. Robert
Like Shamara’s 6x4 machine, this wrecker is on Q-plates which means both must have been re-imported to UK at some time. It would be interesting to know what their previous Continental lives were… Robert
By the time he has retired, it is likely that an ERF NGC 420 driver will have driven an all-singing, all-dancing twenty-first century tractive unit with super-comfort, six-hundred raging horses under the cab floor, the home comforts of a caravan, skid-control, traction-control, cruise-control, electronic everything, mega-efficient engine-braking and quietness enough to hear Faure’s In Paradisium on the radio whilst all the gears change themselves. An experienced and resourceful driver has never needed the latest model to cross deserts and mountains — all he ever needed was a unique and excellent lorry in a cast of thousands.
Finally, let’s imagine him now, behind the wheel of a Middle-East bound NGC 420 climbing to the summit of a Turkish mountain pass in the ‘seventies. Watching the wheels of the artic in front slowly revolve in powder-yellow sunlight, he shifts down two whole gears to drag his heavy tilt round the tight curve of the ascent — a beautiful, clean Fuller change sending ochre exhaust spurting against the rocks as his throaty ■■■■■■■ 335 shouts at the mountain with a guttural roar. With asphalt now a distant memory, the dust rises in clouds, coating the dashboard and obscuring dials. He observes his spread-axle trailer in the door-mirror slowly undulate over the uneven surface, its chassis twisting and untwisting while its tilt canopy tightens then slackens, rippling over its frame and flickering with flashes of gold in the setting sun, its grimy patina of road-film transformed for an instant from industrial to celestial.
Hugging the treacherous edge of the hill, which soars steeply into the next tight bend, he glances down at huddled terracotta roofs far below in a deep defile — a sheer drop — and the landscape draws in around him like a shroud, blocking out the sunlight. His truck jostles for position in a roller-coaster procession of freight traffic from far and wide, wallowing in the dust as it dodges oncoming Turks whose insane driving is only mitigated by the knowledge that they would think nothing of helping an ERF driver to rebuild his engine by the roadside.
Breasting the summit, the driver hits the Jake Brake as he senses the road drop away and the sun-visor dip beneath a line of blue hills which repeat softly into a distant landscape spiked with slender minarets and Mediterranean pines. He watches for the flicker of stop-lights ahead, until he realises that the Iranian trailer in front possesses no such niceties. Aware that now his greatest enemy is the dreaded ‘brake-fade’ resulting from over-heated drums, he leans on the brakes and down-shifts another gear, double-declutching to match the revs before plunging down the impossibly steep, narrow slope — a truly perilous glacial descent in winter - taking him all the way down to the next hairpin bend. Gently, he cadence brakes using the trailer brake handle on the dashboard to prevent the unit from sliding into a ‘jack-knife’ on the loose stones. With consummate ease, he passes the wheel from hand to hand entering the hairpin on an adverse camber and sensing the shuddering Motor Panels cab reach out over the crumbling edge of the abyss before straightening up. Under his breath, he urges and coaxes the sturdy ERF which bellows out lustily as it storms upward again through villages with palm-shaded midans flecked with violet bougainvillea and filled with flocks of glossy goats. He accelerates hard in each gear, using the clutch-brake for slick up-shifts until the old girl vibrates whenever she reaches maximum torque.
The evening is hot and fragmentary fragrances of roadside herbs drift through his open window to mingle with a faint smell of warm diesel. In perfect harmony with his ERF, the driver powers into the evening and onward into the cool, gathering mists of night until the moon rises above the trees to burnish the road ahead with silver. The ceaseless rumble of the powerful engine beneath him will reassure him till dawn.
He trusts this machine implicitly to bear him safely to the Arabian Gulf where, having unloaded, he will park under dusty palms and recline on his bunk in the soporific heat of noon half-listening to the sound of bleating goats, the midday call to prayer and the lazy slap of loose tilt sheets against the side boards drift through his open cab doors. He can rest assured: after all, he drives an ERF NGC 420. Robert
robert1952:
Living in the NGC 420 would have been tough, of course: with all that glazing to the side and rear of the cab, insulation against cold nights would have been poor especially as night-heaters were not generally available in ‘seventies trucks and Jerry Cooke reports that none arrived in Jeddah with one. A contributor called ‘Harry’, blogging on Trucknet, submitted a picture of an NGC 420 pulling a tilt and wrote, ‘I drove this heap for a Swiss outfit. Always broke down in the middle of winter. You could freeze to death with the bad insulation on the cab. The main lump, ■■■■■■■■ was good but it rattled to pieces. All the accessories — compressor, water pump, alternator, even clutches — wore out quickly. They couldn’t stand up to hard wear. The stupid thing had great big contact breakers instead of fuses. I spent days in mid-winter without the engine or night heater working.’ No love lost there, then! Even that 1975 Euro Test in TRUCK frowned upon any glass in the rear of the cab. One can only speculate about the reason for that lower window in the rear of the cab. The only reason I can think of is to enable heavy-haulage drivers to see better behind them. Initially at least, the 7MW cab was provided with curtains to the rear and draw-down blinds to the front and sides. I never found blinds to be satisfactory in a truck. I always fitted my set of tasselled oriental curtains that I bought in Tangiers, to any truck I spent time in. These are not to everyone’s liking, visually, but they beat everything else for insulation and privacy. Driving any truck in the snow with relatively primitive insulation and no night-heater was hard work. Anyone who has driven a truck across Bulgaria and Turkey in winter will know how appalling and downright life-threatening the conditions can be.
Nonetheless this dignified lorry had real character and it made a special contribution to the history of the TIR-trail with its standard factory virtues of the tilting sleeper cab, and the well-proven ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ drive-train. After all, 335 bhp was a lot of horses in those days and it is easy to forget how adequate 335-power was (the fully-freighted 305-powered Scania I once drove to Turkey and back did the job admirably). If I were asked to choose a ‘seventies-built truck in road-worthy condition for a last nostalgic long trip, I would ask for an ERF NGC 420 without hesitation, if only for the sheer pleasure of driving it. Robert
Although there’s no doubt that putting windows in a sleeper cab is a stupid idea from the point of view of insulation etc the problem is still mostly one of no heating assuming you can’t run the engine or the heater isn’t working or good enough or there’s no night heater.Having spent enough nights out in both a Marathon which had windows and an F10 which didn’t even in UK conditions both wagons would get unacceptably cold with out running the engine with the heater on.While as I’ve said there was no excuse for any wagon not to be fitted with a night heater from at least 1975 on except for guvnors trying to save a few bob in the cost of fitting them.
Although having said that if it’s a case of anything close to life threatening type cold then there’s no way that anyone with any sense would shut an engine down anyway.Except for ( very ) short periods.Or breakdowns in which case an independent source of heating like a well maintained working night heater or a generator and an electric fan heater would/should be essential part of the kit and it’s surprising how the international running sector of the industry seemed to be prepared to run into such conditions without such basic essential provision at the time. 
Bloggers who wonder why I place all my source material and background research online while I am finishing writing a book on the subject may think I’m bonkers. Actually, this should strengthen the integrity of the book because I am being transparent in its presentation by displaying most of the goodies here. I have in reserve, of course some excellent pictures, for which I haven’t permission to post online. This also TESTS some of the assumptions and claims made in my texts. Astute bloggers will ruthlessly challenge and query my writings, allowing me to ‘hone’ the final words to ensure as much accuracy as possible. So happy blogging chaps! Robert
Look at this magnificent beast! It is seen here at the end of its life after serving with Shamara. The photo was kindly lent to me by Jerry Cooke. Actually, I think it was the most nicely-proportioned of the five 6x4s with 7MW cabs, probably because it is the only one with a short wheelbase. It probably started life as an NGC 420 and we know was originally a 4x2. Once converted, it would become (in theory) an NGC 852 (NG cab + ■■■■■■■ lump + 85t gross + double-drive).
It is surely time to drop the figure ‘420’ from the name for this model. NGC, yes of course: apparently they all were. ‘European’, yes indeed: they all were. But ‘420’, like ‘360’ and ‘380’ is a bit meaningless. As I described several pages back on this thread, all NGCs appear to have been built with the heavy-duty waisted chassis for maximum permitted weight. This means that in Britain it could run at 32 tonnes but in Holland it could run at 50 tonnes gtw. So, in practice it became an NGC 320 in Manchester, an NGC 500 in Rotterdam, an NGC 380 in Bordeaux, an NGC 420 in Anterwerpen and an NGC 1000 in Jeddah because it was legitimately hauling road-trains grossing up to 100 tonnes!
So from now on, I’m sticking to ERF NGC ‘European’. I’ve already dropped ‘420’ from my text for the book. But the really exciting thing is that just as we start to get smug and complacent about this comfortable new position, some ■■■■■■■ will open a shed door and find an NGG 340 (plated at 34 tonnes) with Gardner 8LXB in it and dear old Carryfast’ll have to have a little lie-down and I’ll have to re-write the f***king book! LOL Robert 
Thanks to Ashley Coghill for scanning these for me! Robert
robert1952:
TAP-line
Trans Arabia’s NGC 420s regularly hauled road-trains the 800 miles or so coast-to-coast along the TAP-line from Jeddah on the Red Sea to Dammam on the Gulf where they had another depot and operating base. That TAP-line route, incidentally, is a demanding road with little to interest the eye. I remember on one trip driving down the arrow-straight road, watching yellow clouds of sand and dust swirl and snake across the road in mysterious eddies before me, reducing visibility. Sand and dust blew progressively into a fog and headlights of oncoming trucks appeared startlingly at the last moment, though most of them were unlit. Then the daylight dimmed to an eerie, dark orange glow. Fine, powdery dust infiltrated the cab by every conceivable means. The temperature rose sharply and soon huge drops of rain began to fall — a rarity in the desert. Before long the windscreen was a mass of smeared mud. Visibility dropped almost to zero. After several minutes the storm abated quite suddenly, and bright sunshine was restored. It was the first time I’d ever heard of a mud storm, let alone driven in one. When I stopped to make tea in the desert, I observed that the front of my truck was caked in muddy sand. ERF appears to have been experimenting with dirt deflection during the NGC 420 production period. Significantly, dirt deflectors appeared on the windscreen pillars, presumably to keep the side windows clean and the mirrors visible. This was clearly an issue as almost every picture I can find of NGC 420s show these deflectors in place. Some of them were painted a different colour from the cab and one example, on Trans Arabia fleet number 108 (a ■■■■■■■ 290 / Fuller 13-sp machine), rather charmingly featured traditional Arab truck art in the form of a simply repeated colourful design. Dirt deflectors also appeared on the upper leading side edges of the protruding front grille to keep the door handles clean. Trans Arabia’s no. 142 featured these. All theNGC 420s in the Belgian Van Steenbergen fleet had them placed much lower down the grille edge, perhaps to keep the driver’s steps clean. Robert
Robert I believe I am correct in saying the ERF European used the same cab as the Scammell crusader and on this picture you can see the dirt deflectors on the windscreen pillar
cheers Johnnie
sammyopisite:
robert1952:
TAP-line
Trans Arabia’s NGC 420s regularly hauled road-trains the 800 miles or so coast-to-coast along the TAP-line from Jeddah on the Red Sea to Dammam on the Gulf where they had another depot and operating base. That TAP-line route, incidentally, is a demanding road with little to interest the eye. I remember on one trip driving down the arrow-straight road, watching yellow clouds of sand and dust swirl and snake across the road in mysterious eddies before me, reducing visibility. Sand and dust blew progressively into a fog and headlights of oncoming trucks appeared startlingly at the last moment, though most of them were unlit. Then the daylight dimmed to an eerie, dark orange glow. Fine, powdery dust infiltrated the cab by every conceivable means. The temperature rose sharply and soon huge drops of rain began to fall — a rarity in the desert. Before long the windscreen was a mass of smeared mud. Visibility dropped almost to zero. After several minutes the storm abated quite suddenly, and bright sunshine was restored. It was the first time I’d ever heard of a mud storm, let alone driven in one. When I stopped to make tea in the desert, I observed that the front of my truck was caked in muddy sand. ERF appears to have been experimenting with dirt deflection during the NGC 420 production period. Significantly, dirt deflectors appeared on the windscreen pillars, presumably to keep the side windows clean and the mirrors visible. This was clearly an issue as almost every picture I can find of NGC 420s show these deflectors in place. Some of them were painted a different colour from the cab and one example, on Trans Arabia fleet number 108 (a ■■■■■■■ 290 / Fuller 13-sp machine), rather charmingly featured traditional Arab truck art in the form of a simply repeated colourful design. Dirt deflectors also appeared on the upper leading side edges of the protruding front grille to keep the door handles clean. Trans Arabia’s no. 142 featured these. All theNGC 420s in the Belgian Van Steenbergen fleet had them placed much lower down the grille edge, perhaps to keep the driver’s steps clean. RobertRobert I believe I am correct in saying the ERF European used the same cab as the Scammell crusader and on this picture you can see the dirt deflectors on the windscreen pillar
cheers Johnnie
Well spotted, Batman! I never thought to look at the other Motor Panels cabs. Cheers, Robert
Meanwhile, back at the ranch… While I was unable to upload stuff onto here earlier in the month ‘ERF-Continental’, alias A-J, did some rummaging on the French forums and came up with some useful detective work for us all. He has already posted his finding of the Laiteries Preval NGC from Vire in France. But he also found two more NGC with the French company Loste in Hellemes-Lille. We already knew from Wobbe Reitma’s list that they had a 4x2 registered 8814GV59 in '75. Now A-J has come up with another 4x2 registered 5673KH59. In addition he found a 6x4 Pacific with a Mack M123 back end, in Loste’s colours, with an ERF 7MW cab! As yet we don’t know its registration number.
This brings the number of 7MW-cabbed 6x4s to five: 3 of them proper NGCs and the other 2 hybrids (ie Shamara’s, Eyckman’s/Corbishley’s, & Cauvas plus Pountain’s & Loste’s vehicles). Robert
