newmercman:
Ramone, as Saviem so rightly said, Daf owe their success in the UK to their DafAid service, not because their product was better than anything else
Go back in time to the late 70s, lorries were nowhere near as reliable as they are now (not counting the electronics ) the British manufacturers were up to their neck in labour problems, build quality was awful, partâs suppliers were unreliable at best, non existent at worse. It was well reported that Leyland were building chassis and storing them in fields because Lucas CAV were on strike and they had no starter motors So if you had a starter motor issue on a lorry on your fleet, it wasnât getting fixed anytime soon The chassis coming down the line were not tested properly as they couldnât start them up When the supply of starter motors did arrive, a couple of blokes were dispatched to the field and fitted them, you can bet that they never did a full PDI on those chassis, they went out the gate to the dealer/distributors as quickly as possible, so there were bound to be problems with those chassis
ERF, Foden and seddon Atkinson had the same supplier problems, their own workforces were not as militant as the BL workers, but they had problems of their own, especially at the recently merged Seddon Atkinson, the result was that there was a lot of reliabilty issues in British Built chassis
The Daf didnât suffer from this so much, so they were ahead of the game there, but the thing that did them so much good was the response time and the availability of new parts when things did go boss eyed on a Daf lorry
Even then, Daf took years to become the giant that they are now, it took a number of things, firstly they took over the Leyland Truck Division, this allowed them to build chassis for the UK market, their rigid chassis are basically evolutions of the Leyland Roadrunner or Red Line range (Albions) or Scammells in the case of their multi wheeler range, mostly made in Britain to this day too
Daf were a small time player before the Leyland hook up
So DAF would have got where it is today if it had been Leyland that had kept the 680 motor and developed it as far as the 3600 and if it had been Leyland that had the DAF cab but arguably not so good after sales service and a workforce that was sometimes on strike or waiting for parts because their suppliers workers were,because of the economic isues of the 1970âs (that old saying from the time you pretend to pay us so we pretend to work applies again ) and if it had been DAF that had the T45 cab,let alone an ERF or Ergo day cab, and had been given the Gardner 180 with a DB 6 speed box to put in it.No matter how arguably good their after sales service was and how much better their better paid workers were putting them together and/or turning out the components.They would have been history long before Leyland went under.Although having said that ironically they might have gone under together because DAF would have been trying to sell a product that was too outdated for itâs domestic market while Leyland would only have had a product that was too advanced for itâs domestic market.
Lawrence Dunbar:
Yes, you are correct in what you say about us old codgers, speaking for myself & my involment with the old Gardners we had no problems at all, We also ran motors with The Perkins Eagles in & we had good service out of them to, but each & every haulier chooses their motors that suits their opperations & every one is different as Im sure you will agree, The old Gardners are a thing of the past I must admit, but there is no need for this C/F geaser to gloat in it , after all Lewis Gardner was a brilliant engineer in his day, Regards Larry
Well LD you are 100% right imho ,its horses for courses but theres no getting away with how popular they were , i would say more popular with the haulier as opposed to the driver but theres many driver on here who also have fond memories of them ,but Gardner werent alone in being slow to respond to the need for development ,theres virtually nothing left here , there were half hearted attempts with little money to back them up so the writing was on the wall . When we hear about the people from Daf working wonders with the 680 1 thing springs to mind ,if they were so gifted why didnt they build their own engine block from scratch in the first place
The fact is it was basically a Leyland design that Leyland couldnât develop because,unlike DAF,it didnât have the customer base in itâs domestic market which would have allowed it to have flogged the thing by putting it into something like a DAF 2800 for launch in the early 1970âs if it had done the job instead of giving it to DAF to do.Thatâs because at best that customer base had too many operators with the old guardâs ideas on speccing their fleet at the time or at best my employersâ ideas even 5 years later in which Gardner 180 powered day cabbed ERFâs and SAâs were still on the wish list thereby reducing the potential sales of trucks like the 2800.But of course the Dutch didnât care because what the Brits wouldnât buy their own customers in their domestic market would and Leyland knew it.
One of the reasons why the money for development wasnât there was because the bankers preferred to invest their money in the foreign manufacturers because those foreign manufacturers had the customer base to to sell the finished product unlike here where too many customers thought that a day cabbed Gardner powered wagon with 6 speed DB box would make them more money than buying one of those,what they viewed at the time as,overpowered inefficient,modern turbocharged,money pits.
How things changed though within 10 years when those customers suddenly changed their minds.
Itâs got nothing to do with being gifted itâs all about econimics which is why DAF knew that it would be cheaper to develop the 680 than design something from scratch.In just the same way that it would have been cheaper for us to have thrown our whole backward truck manufacturing industry away and replaced it with more advanced American designs at least from the mid-late 1960âs on.
The clever part was knowing which existing engine design had the potential for development and which didnât.Which is why DAF took the 680 not the Gardner and made a success of it while Gardner tried to develop itâs engines and,unlike DAF,didnât and itâs also why turbocharged â â â â â â â engines were chosen by the British manufacturers and were more successful against the turbocharged euro and scandinavian competition,in those British trucks which they were fitted in,than Gardners would ever have been.When,of course,the British customer base âeventuallyâ got itâs act together and walked away from those gutless old plodders.By which time it as all too late for the Brits to catch up.
Never let the truth get in the way of a good argument eh Carryfast
Early Dafs were crap, the smaller ones couldnât pull the skin off a rice pudding, they were as unreliable as everything else out there too
They never had the labour problems associated with the British Leyland Empire, so their engineers had time and money to develop the Leyland Engine, but in fairness, most of the work had already been done by the boffins in Lancashire
Suppose for an instance, that instead of Leyland, Gardner were the engine suppliers to Daf and the LX family of engines were the basis of Dafâs designs, would you still feel the same way about the Gardner No, it would be the best thing since sliced bread, so in that context the 0.680 wasnât worth a cup of cold â â â â either, not until the Dutch Engineers breathed on it
newmercman:
Never let the truth get in the way of a good argument eh Carryfast
Early Dafs were crap, the smaller ones couldnât pull the skin off a rice pudding, they were as unreliable as everything else out there too
They never had the labour problems associated with the British Leyland Empire, so their engineers had time and money to develop the Leyland Engine, but in fairness, most of the work had already been done by the boffins in Lancashire
Suppose for an instance, that instead of Leyland, Gardner were the engine suppliers to Daf and the LX family of engines were the basis of Dafâs designs, would you still feel the same way about the Gardner No, it would be the best thing since sliced bread, so in that context the 0.680 wasnât worth a cup of cold â â â â either, not until the Dutch Engineers breathed on it
Youâve missed my point nmm.It wouldnât have mattered how good those DAF engineers were thereâs no way that they could have just got a load more power out of an old Brit naturally aspirated motor unless they knew that motor had the potential to stand up to it and that was the clever bit which both DAF and Leyland knew but only DAF knew they could sell in their domestic market in sufficient quantities to justify the effort and expense unlike Leyland.Thatâs assuming Leylad even had access to that type of development budget anyway.Their track record up to that point suggests they didnât even if theyâd have had a domestic market full of,what the Brit customers would have viewed as,power crazed Dutch types.
History shows that just as Hugh Gardner had told them the Gardner didnât have that potential,certainly compared to the 14 litre â â â â â â â â â â â â â is why no one with any sense would have wanted to get involved with trying to develop the Gardner any further and why Hawker Siddely wanted to get involved is anyoneâs guess when â â â â â â â were already able to provide reliable cheap power up to at least the 400 hp mark .
As youâve said it eventually turned into a fight between the Leyland Roadtrain with 300 hp + â â â â â â â power and the 3300.Your choice shows which was the right way to go and that would never have been Gardner .Itâs just that Iâd have been building something a lot sooner with 350 + and 13 speed fuller take it or leave it with a Kenworth badge on the front and an Aerodyne cab not the Leyland T45. Just as the Ozzies decided to do and no surprise itâs that idea which is able to compete with (and win out over) DAFâs and other euro and scandinavian competition to this day in the colonial markets and thereâs no reason why the same couldnât have applied here with a suicidal loss leader type predatory pricing policy using all that money saved on development.
The ozzies did use a lot of Gardners in the early years over there, but they had massive weights and vast distances to cover, so they went the way they did
British Leyland were quite innovative remember, they also managed to stick a hairdryer on the side of their engines with the TL12, not a bad engine that They also went on to develop the Gas Turbine, now that must blow your frock up surely Yeah I know, donât call you Shirley
So tell me one thing, whatâs all this â â â â â â â nonsense Thought you were a Detroit man
To put some sort of time line into the context of Leyland engine development and the DAF relationship, even though this is the Gardner engine thread.
DAF, which originated as a trailer manufacturer first approached Leyland for an engine in the early 1950s and took the O.350 which was used in the Leyland Comet. This itself was an engine that Leyland had taken the design from someone else whose name escapes me at the moment but it was a Liverpool company. DAF later took the O.680 engine from Leyland and made a success of it as we know. After the problems with the Power-Plus version Leyland had given up on developing the engine further in the 1960s and poured all its time, money, and efforts into a development programme for the fixed head 500 series. This also needed a totally new engine manufacturing plant. We all know the outcome of that programme. Meanwhile AEC had run into internal political problems with the unreliability issues with the V8 engine. Needing new engines urgently Leyland turned to a restricted development programme for a high power (for the time, early 1970s) engine and the TL12 evolved from the AEC 760. For mid-power range engines Leyland developed, again on a restricted budget, the TL11 from the 0.680, an early stop-gap version being the turbo-charged 690 used in some âTwo-Pedalâ Beaver models. So it was by default that Leyland was forced into a development programme for its O.680 after it had initially given up on further development of that engine.
More 2+2=5 arguments from the master. The idea that DAF selected Leyland as their engine supplier because their great engineers recognised the potential of the designs has no factual foundation whatsoever. In the 1950s, DAF did not design engines. They did not make engines. They bought engines. Their development efforts only started after they had been fitting Leyland engines for many years. Lots of small companies around Europe used Leyland and Gardner engines.
The 1962 F2600 used the P680, unmodified, which was unreliable by British standards. DAF got away with it because the European market somehow tolerated it.
So Daf took over Leyland I wonder why, of course it had nothing to do with the contract to supply the MOD with military vehicles, which since time began had been supplied by Bedford at the lighter end of the market. This was political machination at its finest. Crow.
gingerfold:
This itself was an engine that Leyland had taken the design from someone else whose name escapes me at the moment but it was a Liverpool company. /quote]
Remembered, it was Napier, and they built the first batches of Comet engines for Leyland. This Napier design originated as a WW2 military engined and was originally designed as a multi-fuel unit.
newmercman:
The ozzies did use a lot of Gardners in the early years over there, but they had massive weights and vast distances to cover, so they went the way they did
British Leyland were quite innovative remember, they also managed to stick a hairdryer on the side of their engines with the TL12, not a bad engine that They also went on to develop the Gas Turbine, now that must blow your frock up surely Yeah I know, donât call you Shirley
So tell me one thing, whatâs all this â â â â â â â nonsense Thought you were a Detroit man
But you didnât need to be hauling massive weights and covering massive distances to make US engineering viable as the weight limits in the US have always shown and the typical type of gross weights and distances in the New Zealand market.
Iâm using â â â â â â â as an example in this case because even a total Detroit believer like me knows that it was â â â â â â â which had the ability to beat just about every other four stroke design at the time with itâs combination of cost effective,reliable,power outputs and customer acceptance in the general world market and that included here when the British customers eventually got their act together.But absolutely putting the TL 12 in the T45 was a good try but it was never going to beat that preferred big cam 320 option which you chose let alone a 350 + â â â â â â â put in that British built Kenworth Aerodyne in the 1970âs.
Although the turbocharged 8V92 up to 475 hp would have been a no extra cost option for those who knew better.
The real irony though is at that point in time many ( too many to have made a British built KW viable ) British customers would still have preferred a Gardner 180,or at best 240 powered, day cabbed Atki or ERF with a 6 speed DB box.
Unlike those Australian and New Zealand buyers.
[zb]
anorak:
More 2+2=5 arguments from the master. The idea that DAF selected Leyland as their engine supplier because their great engineers recognised the potential of the designs has no factual foundation whatsoever. In the 1950s, DAF did not design engines. They did not make engines. They bought engines. Their development efforts only started after they had been fitting Leyland engines for many years. Lots of small companies around Europe used Leyland and Gardner engines.
The 1962 F2600 used the P680, unmodified, which was unreliable by British standards. DAF got away with it because the European market somehow tolerated it.
But no one ever used Gardner engines,in reliable turbocharged form,in a truck which could have competed with the 3300 or 3600,at least in viable production numbers,and thereâs no way that DAF would have ploughed all that development budget into the 680,if they didnât think that it would have had at least a more than reasonable chance,of standing up to that development reliably,before they did it.
[zb]
anorak:
More 2+2=5 arguments from the master. The idea that DAF selected Leyland as their engine supplier because their great engineers recognised the potential of the designs has no factual foundation whatsoever. In the 1950s, DAF did not design engines. They did not make engines. They bought engines. Their development efforts only started after they had been fitting Leyland engines for many years. Lots of small companies around Europe used Leyland and Gardner engines.
The 1962 F2600 used the P680, unmodified, which was unreliable by British standards. DAF got away with it because the European market somehow tolerated it.
But no one ever used Gardner engines,in reliable turbocharged form,in a truck which could have competed with the 3300 or 3600,at least in viable production numbers,and thereâs no way that DAF would have ploughed all that development budget into the 680,if they didnât think that it would have had at least a more than reasonable chance,of standing up to that development reliably,before they did it.
hiya,
Didnât John Killingbeck put turboâs on Gardner engines â â .
thanks harry, long retired.
[zb]
anorak:
More 2+2=5 arguments from the master. The idea that DAF selected Leyland as their engine supplier because their great engineers recognised the potential of the designs has no factual foundation whatsoever. In the 1950s, DAF did not design engines. They did not make engines. They bought engines. Their development efforts only started after they had been fitting Leyland engines for many years. Lots of small companies around Europe used Leyland and Gardner engines.
The 1962 F2600 used the P680, unmodified, which was unreliable by British standards. DAF got away with it because the European market somehow tolerated it.
But no one ever used Gardner engines,in reliable turbocharged form,in a truck which could have competed with the 3300 or 3600,at least in viable production numbers,and thereâs no way that DAF would have ploughed all that development budget into the 680,if they didnât think that it would have had at least a more than reasonable chance,of standing up to that development reliably,before they did it.
hiya,
Didnât John Killingbeck put turboâs on Gardner engines â â .
thanks harry, long retired.
Maybe but the fact is Gardner were effectively finished by the time the 3600 was introduced and no Gardner powered British trucks were built that could match that.The reason for that was because the 680 was the better engine design.While the turbocharged 14 Litre â â â â â â â British built trucks were still in the running at that time too because they were also a better option than the Gardner and better than the 3600 in terms of their cost effective power output potential as showed by the continuing acceptance of â â â â â â â powered Brits up to those last of the line New Zealand order Fodens.
Even loyal Gardner customers like Bewick wasnât interested in Gardnerâs turbocharged ideas and bought the scandinavian competition instead which says everything.
[zb]
anorak:
More 2+2=5 arguments from the master. The idea that DAF selected Leyland as their engine supplier because their great engineers recognised the potential of the designs has no factual foundation whatsoever. In the 1950s, DAF did not design engines. They did not make engines. They bought engines. Their development efforts only started after they had been fitting Leyland engines for many years. Lots of small companies around Europe used Leyland and Gardner engines.
The 1962 F2600 used the P680, unmodified, which was unreliable by British standards. DAF got away with it because the European market somehow tolerated it.
But no one ever used Gardner engines,in reliable turbocharged form,in a truck which could have competed with the 3300 or 3600,at least in viable production numbers,and thereâs no way that DAF would have ploughed all that development budget into the 680,if they didnât think that it would have had at least a more than reasonable chance,of standing up to that development reliably,before they did it.
Hahahahaha! Are you suggesting that they could see 25 years into the future? That a company, which had never designed or built a lorry engine in its history, had engineers who were so clever that they decided that the 680 engine was so superior to all of the competition, that they should adopt it over their own efforts? How about this alternative scenario- that DAF, at the time, was not capable of bringing an engine to production, so simply chose one which was available, cheaply?
Note to all Gardner engine admirers- my contributions to this thread will, henceforth, be in two distinct categories:
Serious, in which I will attempt to provoke sensible technical and commercial discourse.
Sarcastic, in which I will attempt to stymie verbose, groundless fantasy.
newmercman:
Never let the truth get in the way of a good argument eh Carryfast
Early Dafs were crap, the smaller ones couldnât pull the skin off a rice pudding, they were as unreliable as everything else out there too
Youâve missed my point nmm.It wouldnât have mattered how good those DAF engineers were thereâs no way that they could have just got a load more power out of an old Brit naturally aspirated motor unless they knew that motor had the potential to stand up to it and that was the clever bit which both DAF and Leyland knew but only DAF knew they could sell in their domestic market in sufficient quantities to justify the effort and expense unlike Leyland.Thatâs assuming Leylad even had access to that type of development budget anyway.Their track record up to that point suggests they didnât even if theyâd have had a domestic market full of,what the Brit customers would have viewed as,power crazed Dutch types.
History shows that just as Hugh Gardner had told them the Gardner didnât have that potential,certainly compared to the 14 litre â â â â â â â â â â â â â is why no one with any sense would have wanted to get involved with trying to develop the Gardner any further and why Hawker Siddely wanted to get involved is anyoneâs guess when â â â â â â â were already able to provide reliable cheap power up to at least the 400 hp mark .
As youâve said it eventually turned into a fight between the Leyland Roadtrain with 300 hp + â â â â â â â power and the 3300.Your choice shows which was the right way to go and that would never have been Gardner .Itâs just that Iâd have been building something a lot sooner with 350 + and 13 speed fuller take it or leave it with a Kenworth badge on the front and an Aerodyne cab not the Leyland T45. Just as the Ozzies decided to do and no surprise itâs that idea which is able to compete with (and win out
over) DAFâs and other euro and scandinavian competition to this day in the colonial markets and thereâs no reason why the same couldnât have applied here with a suicidal loss leader type predatory pricing policy using all that money saved on development.
But look at leyland the t45 range was launched in 1979 with no sleeper cab option. By then the sleeper cab was a well established on UK roads that was not a logical move as nmm says the strike and supply problems didnât help the British manufacturers the previously profitable leyland truck division had itâs funds syphoned off to fund the Austin princess and other bl monstrositys.
The leyland group should of by rights had a newish high power v8 engine to power the roadtrain if they hadnât have thought it was acceptable for customers to do there testing then killed off aec due to internal rivalry.
As someone else said daf would have never survived as an independent truck duilder if it wasnât for the leyland merger which gave them products across the whole truck Market and the big army contract of the mid 80s. When the leyland daf empire collapsed the Dutch and belguim government steped in but the British government walked away.
If it wasnât for paccar daf wouldnât be here either.
technical dicussions and politics are way above my head these days , but i wish i could have the money again that the old gardeners earned for me . i know they were hard work ,but hard work meant good wages in those far off days . cheers dave
[zb]
anorak:
More 2+2=5 arguments from the master. The idea that DAF selected Leyland as their engine supplier because their great engineers recognised the potential of the designs has no factual foundation whatsoever. In the 1950s, DAF did not design engines. They did not make engines. They bought engines. Their development efforts only started after they had been fitting Leyland engines for many years. Lots of small companies around Europe used Leyland and Gardner engines.
The 1962 F2600 used the P680, unmodified, which was unreliable by British standards. DAF got away with it because the European market somehow tolerated it.
But no one ever used Gardner engines,in reliable turbocharged form,in a truck which could have competed with the 3300 or 3600,at least in viable production numbers,and thereâs no way that DAF would have ploughed all that development budget into the 680,if they didnât think that it would have had at least a more than reasonable chance,of standing up to that development reliably,before they did it.
Hahahahaha! Are you suggesting that they could see 25 years into the future? That a company, which had never designed or built a lorry engine in its history, had engineers who were so clever that they decided that the 680 engine was so superior to all of the competition, that they should adopt it over their own efforts? How about this alternative scenario- that DAF, at the time, was not capable of bringing an engine to production, so simply chose one which was available, cheaply?
Note to all Gardner engine admirers- my contributions to this thread will, henceforth, be in two distinct categories:
Serious, in which I will attempt to provoke sensible technical and commercial discourse.
Sarcastic, in which I will attempt to stymie verbose, groundless fantasy.
What Iâm âactuallyâ suggesting,as Iâve said on countless other posts,is that the difference ( which is a matter of wether it has the built in reduncancy of being able to accept more stress than itâs originally designed for ) between a naturally aspirated engine design,that will happily accept retro fit turbocharging and one that wonât,isnât there by design itâs there by accident because in the cases of the Gardner,the 680 and the 14 Litre â â â â â â â no one at the design stage knew that they were going to eventually be used,as much if not more,in turbocharged form as naturally aspirated form.
Itâs only at the later stages of development when those issues were sorted out in the case of the 680 but the fact is those DAF engineers knew that it would manage it and had the potential in it before they started or they wouldnât have wasted the money and rescources on it and would have chucked it on the scrap heap and started on a new design from the beginning.Whereas Gardnerâs engineers had already been told by the thingâs designer not to bother because he already knew that his design didnât have the type of redundancy,in itâs ability to accept more stress,sufficient enough to make the figures required,reliably.In which case that motor should have been thrown on the scrap heap at the end of the 1960âs and then the Brits should have just asked the Americans to supply them with â â â â â â â motors and as we all know the turbocharged â â â â â â â and the big cam was available to them from at least the early 1970âs together with the Aerodyne cab and other better,cheaper,chassis technology to compete with the DAF and the Volvo F88-F10/12 and the Scania 110/111/141 etc.
The problem for the Brits was the domestic customer base didnât provide the required financial incentive in the form of demand to have made that leap.Which is why,as Iâve also said on countless other posts,the Australians have had a truck manufacturing industry since the 1970âs while ours gradually faded away from that same time.The only surprising thing is how long the Brits kept going but no surprise that it was US engine technology in the form of â â â â â â â â â â â British in the form of Gardner,which was the reason for that.Whereas the fact that Gardner was kept going for so long by itâs misguided British customers,instead of them following the example of their colonial counterparts in changing over to a locally built more advanced American truck buying policy,is one of the main reasons why the British industry was put back at least 10-20 years in development which was a delay and stalling which it could never recover from.
So why come the 60s did British engine builders not start from scratch and design new engines for the motorway age Iâm sure we still had people who had the knowhow.
newmercman:
Never let the truth get in the way of a good argument eh Carryfast
Early Dafs were crap, the smaller ones couldnât pull the skin off a rice pudding, they were as unreliable as everything else out there too
Youâve missed my point nmm.It wouldnât have mattered how good those DAF engineers were thereâs no way that they could have just got a load more power out of an old Brit naturally aspirated motor unless they knew that motor had the potential to stand up to it and that was the clever bit which both DAF and Leyland knew but only DAF knew they could sell in their domestic market in sufficient quantities to justify the effort and expense unlike Leyland.Thatâs assuming Leylad even had access to that type of development budget anyway.Their track record up to that point suggests they didnât even if theyâd have had a domestic market full of,what the Brit customers would have viewed as,power crazed Dutch types.
History shows that just as Hugh Gardner had told them the Gardner didnât have that potential,certainly compared to the 14 litre â â â â â â â â â â â â â is why no one with any sense would have wanted to get involved with trying to develop the Gardner any further and why Hawker Siddely wanted to get involved is anyoneâs guess when â â â â â â â were already able to provide reliable cheap power up to at least the 400 hp mark .
As youâve said it eventually turned into a fight between the Leyland Roadtrain with 300 hp + â â â â â â â power and the 3300.Your choice shows which was the right way to go and that would never have been Gardner .Itâs just that Iâd have been building something a lot sooner with 350 + and 13 speed fuller take it or leave it with a Kenworth badge on the front and an Aerodyne cab not the Leyland T45. Just as the Ozzies decided to do and no surprise itâs that idea which is able to compete with (and win out
over) DAFâs and other euro and scandinavian competition to this day in the colonial markets and thereâs no reason why the same couldnât have applied here with a suicidal loss leader type predatory pricing policy using all that money saved on development.
But look at leyland the t45 range was launched in 1979 with no sleeper cab option. By then the sleeper cab was a well established on UK roads that was not a logical move as nmm says the strike and supply problems didnât help the British manufacturers the previously profitable leyland truck division had itâs funds syphoned off to fund the Austin princess and other bl monstrositys.
The leyland group should of by rights had a newish high power v8 engine to power the roadtrain if they hadnât have thought it was acceptable for customers to do there testing then killed off aec due to internal rivalry.
As someone else said daf would have never survived as an independent truck duilder if it wasnât for the leyland merger which gave them products across the whole truck Market and the big army contract of the mid 80s. When the leyland daf empire collapsed the Dutch and belguim government steped in but the British government walked away.
If it wasnât for paccar daf wouldnât be here either.
As Iâve said it would have been doable to provide British built KWâs with the Aerodyne cab and 300 + hp â â â â â â â engine during the 1970âs but they wouldnât have had enough orders to have made it worthwhile so they continued to flog day cab Gardner 180 powered ERFâs and SAâs instead because thatâs what too many Brits wanted not Kenworths like their Ozzie and New Zealander counterparts were ordering at the time.
Just like Austin Morris could find buyers for the zb cars it was turning out when the XJ6/12,V8 Rover and Triumph 2.5 etc were available instead.While other British buyers were happy to spend more on subsidising the better wages of German workers turning out inferior BMW 1600âs,2002âs and 3.0 Sâs.
kr79:
So why come the 60s did British engine builders not start from scratch and design new engines for the motorway age Iâm sure we still had people who had the knowhow.
Why when thereâs an acceptable US product already available which the customers will buy with itâs development costs already paid for by US buyers.In which case itâs a case of throwing away a competitive advantage because,as Iâve said,that saving can be passed on to the customer in the purchase price.
Which is why my old employers never went to Rolls Royce in 1971 asking for the turbocharged Rolls Royce CV12 to be developed to provide them with the required 600 hp + needed for the job.Unlike the army could afford to do later with the help of tax payer cash which the private sector didnât have the benefit of.
The surprising thing is that the US was happy to provide componentry to British manufacturers which we then used to (successfully) compete with American ones like Oshkosh.
) the British manufacturers were up to their neck in labour problems, build quality was awful, partâs suppliers were unreliable at best, non existent at worse. It was well reported that Leyland were building chassis and storing them in fields because Lucas CAV were on strike and they had no starter motors
The chassis coming down the line were not tested properly as they couldnât start them up
) and if it had been DAF that had the T45 cab,let alone an ERF or Ergo day cab, and had been given the Gardner 180 with a DB 6 speed box to put in it.No matter how arguably good their after sales service was and how much better their better paid workers were putting them together and/or turning out the components.They would have been history long before Leyland went under.Although having said that ironically they might have gone under together because DAF would have been trying to sell a product that was too outdated for itâs domestic market while Leyland would only have had a product that was too advanced for itâs domestic market. 
No, it would be the best thing since sliced bread, so in that context the 0.680 wasnât worth a cup of cold â â â â either, not until the Dutch Engineers breathed on it 
