Saviem:
In the early days Pat drove everything himself, but he drove EXACTLY as the factory personnel told him to! Not as he would perhaps have chosen to. He drove to extract the best combination of performance and economy from the vehicle, just as the men that built it told him! As an aside I was present and involved at goodness knows how many road tests with European Journals. Some of the driving standards left a lot to be desired, certainly for this ex Shropshire lorry driver, and on more than one occasion closed my eyes and thought of England!!!
Saviem, I was re-reading your fabulous eulogy of Pat Kennett, following my posting of his EuroTest to TRUCK back in January. I have only quoted a fraction of your whole piece, above. But it reminds me that my preference for lorries like the ERF NGC ‘European’ reflects my now very dated driving-style and my incurable forty-five year habit of double-declutching even in synchromesh vehicles (which never impresses company driver-assessors these days!). Back in the ‘sixties I actually learnt to double-declutch on a piano, using the pedals provided, with an ancient AA manual propped on the music stand, before finally putting my new-found skills to the test in a borrowed Morris Minor. Whoever said the young are not resourceful? In the late nineties, TRUCK magazine invited me to apply for the post of staff Truck Tester. The interview went reasonably well because the magazine was already routinely publishing my Long-Distance Diaries and all sorts of other articles I was churning out in those days. The test drive, conducted by no less than the editor-in-chief, George Bennett and the Senior DAF Driver Richard Kingston, proved to be my downfall. I must emphasise that it was all a very gentlemanly and civilised experience, of course, but they were quite right: I drove their DAF 85 demonstrator as it were a B-series ERF and my driving style proved simply too archaic. Of course I would never claim that this style is any better than the modern styles, just different; but I prefer it. It’s a matter of ‘horses for courses’ and one should really drive a synchromesh truck like a car, but I don’t. As it was, Jack Semple, who chaired the interview, recognised that I clearly had an awful lot of bursting energy to do some serious long-haul work before I settled down to anything as routine as truck testing. And he was right because I went on to do Middle-East and North Africa driving instead. I must say, my visits to see Dave Young, Dean Styles, Jack Semple, George Bennett and Andy Salter in ‘Slurry House’ (as the Farmers Weekly blokes used to call it) were very welcoming, enjoyable experiences and although my period of truck journalism tailed off and ceased, I have happy memories of the work. Robert 
