Well, I notice that this is my 1000th posting on this forum (I also notice that I have postings on 73 different threads) so I must have been busier than I thought!
Anyway I decided, perhaps a little self-indulgently, to re-post Benkku of Finland’s fantasy (no ERFs on Astran!) drawing below, because it just happens to draw together in one little image: my favourite model of truck (ERF NGC); my favourite kind of truck-routes (Middle-East); my favourite type of trailer (TIR tilt); my favourite trucking life-style (long-haul); and my favourite livery (Astran). Cheers Benkku!
Here’s to the next 1000 posts (if I don’t get drummed out of the forum before then!!). Robert
robert1952:
Well, I notice that this is my 1000th posting on this forum (I also notice that I have postings on 73 different threads) so I must have been busier than I thought!
Anyway I decided, perhaps a little self-indulgently, to re-post Benkku of Finland’s fantasy (no ERFs on Astran!) drawing below, because it just happens to draw together in one little image: my favourite model of truck (ERF NGC); my favourite kind of truck-routes (Middle-East); my favourite type of trailer (TIR tilt); my favourite trucking life-style (long-haul); and my favourite livery (Astran). Cheers Benkku!
Here’s to the next 1000 posts (if I don’t get drummed out of the forum before then!!). Robert
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Nice one robert ,as a young un at 42 i allways look forward to reading your posts and looking at your photos,keep them coming m8,thank you .seth
Robert, as a fellow TIR man its my duty to warn you - The Shed Police have entered your name on their data base! Any more degoratory remarks comparing sheds to …Aaaaaaagggrrr…(erfs) will result in a class A action that will cost you shed loads of dosh!
All the best,H.
Here is an excerpt from an article by Brian Weatherley written in Commercial Motor in the '80s, plotting the history of the Motor Panels cab. The excerpt is pertinent to the ERF NGC 420. Should you wish to view the whole article, I have posted it on the Motor Panels Coventry thread. Robert
‘Motor Panels: cab manufacturer and trend seller
The first manufacturer to develop a universal cab design using standard pressings, the first to launch a commercial vehicle ‘club cab’, the first British company to produce a 2.5m steel sleeper cab … these are just a few of the claims which are made by Motor Panels. Brian Weatherley visited the trailblazing Coventry cab builder. Although European operators were successfully using Volvo, Scania, MAN and other vehicles with 2.5 metre-wide cabs, UK hauliers were far from convinced of the need for a bigger, heavier cab. “They simply didn’t want one,” says Merrick Taylor. "When we introduced the Mk IV at the 1966 show, we were actually laughed out of court. They said, ‘You’ll never sell it.’ " Ironically, it was another European manufacturer, FTF Floor, which in 1967 was first to use the Mk IV. The small Dutch vehicle builder wanted to expand into the sleeper cab market but could not afford the high tooling costs of own-cab production. This established a link with Motor Panels that still exists today.
Next to use the Mk IV was Mack in 1968, Although the US truck builder had a 2.5 metre cab in the States it chose MP to supply cabs for its European models.
The first UK vehicle manufacturer to use the Mk IV was Scammell in 1969. Its Crusader tractive unit used both day and sleeper versions of it, Then came ERF in 1970 with its European 3/4 MW range, some of which filtered back into the UK. In the same year RABA, the Hungarian truck builders, used it.
By the early Seventies cab construction regulations and proposed legislation were having a major impact on cab design. As a result, MP began to totally rethink its standard panel cab concept to match European manufacturers, particularly Volvo. This manufacturer had “really seized upon driver appeal”, according to MP’s sates director Neville O’Keeffe who sums up British truck cab interiors of the time as “Black hardboard in standard – red hardboard in deluxe models”.’
Sigh! All the pictures of Swiss units are on this thread, I’m afraid, Harry. Maybe some more will turn up one day in some Swiss ex-schoolboy’s attic! I did hear that the Swiss-spec NGCs were half-timbered like tudor Morris Travellers… Robert
Sigh! All the pictures of Swiss units are on this thread, I’m afraid, Harry. Maybe some more will turn up one day in some Swiss ex-schoolboy’s attic! I did hear that the Swiss-spec NGCs were half-timbered like tudor Morris Travellers… Robert
Harry’s rare Swiss spec NGC by all accounts the main problem was accessibility to every component which might explain the lack of reliability and driver visibility issues.Which was offset by the extreme custom spec low final drive ratio which gave it unmatched hill climbing abilities.
Sigh! All the pictures of Swiss units are on this thread, I’m afraid, Harry. Maybe some more will turn up one day in some Swiss ex-schoolboy’s attic! I did hear that the Swiss-spec NGCs were half-timbered like tudor Morris Travellers… Robert
Harry’s rare Swiss spec NGC by all accounts the main problem was accessibility to every component which might explain the lack of reliability and driver visibility issues.Which was offset by the extreme custom spec low final drive ratio which gave it unmatched hill climbing abilities.
When Harold MacMillan was asked what he feared most, he is reputed to have replied, ‘Events, dear boy, events!’ This was probably a mis-quote, because I have a feeling that he was at the '73 Brussels motor show viewing the ERF stand, and peering at the roof of the tilted NGC 420 cab, he said ‘Vents, dear boy, vents!’
I say this because I have just been playing the piano in my flat in Cairo with a picture of MMG 772P propped on the music stand and I suddenly noticed that it did not have that very distinctive roof vent placed centrally at the front above the windscreen. I thought I’d better investigate further, and to my surprise I found a total of four without vents. (I call it a vent, I suppose strictly speaking it is an intake).This may be fewer of course because two of them were the pair displayed at the Brussels motor show. (The one shown on the front of all the early promo literature is one of these and you can see clearly that it lacks that vent [dear boy]). The other one not to have that vent is the wrecker, Q824 RGC. It may be that only two didn’t have vents and that the demo units became MMG 772P and Q824 RGC respectively. This would make particular sense in respect of Q824 RGC, which I have always suspected of being a converted drawbar motorwagen rather than a stretched unit - and yes, one of the demo trucks was a draw-bar outfit. Well that’s my brains burnt out on the matter; if anyone has alternative ideas about the vents, do throw them into the melting pot for discussion! Now then, where was I with that piano piece…? Robert
The snap of the cab tilted was a fair warning for that ERF of mine. 75% cab tilt & repair- 25% making tracks = 100% bankrupt O/D. It broke down in the space of a few weeks in CH,F,GB. & every time needed a call out.
I assume you are referring to Harry’s breakdowns and not to my vent issues, Straight-eight!
Now about these here vents. MMG 772P was unlikely to have been one of those 2 demonstrators, because it would have been on an L-plate not a P-plate, and in any case it was a couple of years into production before they were made available in UK. So there were probably 3 of the vent-less buggers altogether.
I love the absurdity of this: I spent all afternoon drawing up complex invigilation timetables for my end-of-year secondary exams; and here I am fretting about 3 vent-less cabs on 40-year old ERFs. When I retire I’ll be able to fret to my heart’s content, with a ton and ginnick in one hand and my top-lap in the other! Robert
Hey Robert, Here two but known already■■?, But a pic too much is better as… can’t remember if seen because of holes in my brain
borrowed from Viktor German Collection.
Well I’m glad you posted those, Eric, because I have them both but I’m not allowed to post them. The Swiss picture is just a much better quality version of an image of posted much earlier in the thread, and it was photographed by John Douglas.
The first picture however, was taken by Wobbe Reitsma himself, when he went to interview its owner in the late '80s. Here’s the low-down on it: Bought new by Kooy of Barendrecht, Holland in 1974, DB-77-52 passed to Cess Willemstein, also of Barendrecht, in 1978. This photo, taken in 1986, shows the old girl with its cab newly painted and its ■■■■■■■ 335 recently overhauled. By this time it had done 1.3 million kms. Like most Dutch 7MWs it had acquired a plastic visor but this one had also acquired an extended bumper, fogs and spots, air horns and even a Michelin Man. The radiator boards probably protected against the bleak polder winds, but lent the wagon something of a Mad Max appearance. It remained in service as a spare unit until October 1989, when it was sold to a vehicle breaker.
The Dutch one, after 15 years of service, was definitely not a ‘shed’ like the Swiss one!
Incidentally, I am still on the look-out for a Driver’s Manual for an ERF NGC ‘European’ IN ENGLISH. I keep an eye on ebay but I don’t very often see UK magazines for the small ads. If anyone gets wind of one, perhaps they could PM me. Here’s a picture of the French one. It has the same image on the front as the Dutch version, so I imagine the English one should look pretty much the same. It’s only a slim-line thing. Cheers! Robert
robert1952:
Incidentally, I am still on the look-out for a Driver’s Manual for an ERF NGC ‘European’ IN ENGLISH. I keep an eye on ebay but I don’t very often see UK magazines for the small ads. If anyone gets wind of one, perhaps they could PM me. Here’s a picture of the French one. It has the same image on the front as the Dutch version, so I imagine the English one should look pretty much the same. It’s only a slim-line thing. Cheers! Robert
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hey Robert most manual’s were French here in the Flanders, ET POUR LES FLAMANDS LA MÊME CHOSE
robert1952:
Incidentally, I am still on the look-out for a Driver’s Manual for an ERF NGC ‘European’ IN ENGLISH. I keep an eye on ebay but I don’t very often see UK magazines for the small ads. If anyone gets wind of one, perhaps they could PM me. Here’s a picture of the French one. It has the same image on the front as the Dutch version, so I imagine the English one should look pretty much the same. It’s only a slim-line thing. Cheers! Robert
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hey Robert most manual’s were French here in the Flanders, ET POUR LES FLAMANDS LA MÊME CHOSE
I notice that DB-77-52, the truck that gave 15 years of service in Holland, also hadn’t got one of those vents. However, as we know its history from the cradle to the grave, there need be no speculation that it may have been turned into something else! Robert
