Im just thinking how many hauliers would have bought another lorry with a motor panels cab with a ■■■■■■■ or a roller in it .What would be the point when Leyland had a decent well regarded in house engine and cab ,didnt Leyland already do that with the Big J and the Crusader■■? WTF do we keep hearing about short stroke and lack of torque when at the end of the day the engine performed very well ,even prompting Volvo to produce the 290 F88 in response . Test results proved that it was economical and fast ,which is what operators wanted ,the build quality and detailing was the problem. Im sure that most Marathons would have gone into fleets where AECs and Leylands would have been the norm and Id be surprised if any driver who progressed from a Mandator or Buffalo would have complained .
The terms ‘boy racer’ and ‘Triumph 2.5’ are strange bedfellows, I worked for a Triumph/Rover dealer and can’t recal anyone under 60 + actually owning one! 
Pete.
I think back in the mid to late 70’s a boy racer would have had a mk1 or if he was loaded a mk2 cortina, or something even cheaper & more fun if you kept it out of the ditches would have been a Mini.
Can anyone recall what the price difference would have been, between having a TL12 or ■■■■■■■ in the same chassis?
Thanks Dave.
windrush:
The terms ‘boy racer’ and ‘Triumph 2.5’ are strange bedfellows, I worked for a Triumph/Rover dealer and can’t recal anyone under 60 + actually owning one!Pete.
Boy racers didn’t have the cash to buy new ones or to take the things to main dealers to fix them although the local dealer to me ( Lancaster ) did make loads of money out of all the drive shaft/ rear wheel bearing assemblies they flogged me at trade price.Which was the thing’s main achilles heel and least when it was driven as it was designed to be. 
So Triumph stroked the 2,000 engine to 2.5 and fitted it with more or less the first production fuel injection system running with individual throttle bodies and a 6 speed manual box all for the benefit of pensioners to drive to the post office to collect their pension. 
Having said that you’re right they also had that market cornered in the form of Rover 2000 P6 and Triumph 2000 automatic.Ironically my dad had one of the latter which he replaced his old Herald with when he was only in his 40’s.
dave docwra:
I think back in the mid to late 70’s a boy racer would have had a mk1 or if he was loaded a mk2 cortina, or something even cheaper & more fun if you kept it out of the ditches would have been a Mini.
I paid around £500 for my J reg Mk2 2.5 in 1977 and I was earning around £30 per week which was a trainees wage so wouldn’t call that loaded and less than 6 months wages.A 1600 E wasn’t much if any cheaper.
As for Minis think of it today as the difference between someone on minimum wage buying a Vauxhall Corsa because they prefer to spend their money on something else other than cars v someone who saves up their money and buys a BMW.On that note I’m sure the 325 is known today as a boy racer’s motor of choice not a pensioner’s.While staying with the rwd IRS three box design performance saloon predictably worked for BMW.While going for the live axle hatchback SD1,let alone later fwd Jap knock offs predictably took out the profitable Rover Triumph part of Leyland car division.My theory is that was conspiracy not ■■■■ up.Just like going for the TL12 narrow short sleeper TL12 Marathon and ‘low datum’ TL12 T45 instead of a Rolls/■■■■■■■ Crusader 2.
Carryfast:
…My theory is that was conspiracy not ■■■■ up.Just like going for the TL12 narrow short sleeper TL12 Marathon and ‘low datum’ TL12 T45 instead of a Rolls/■■■■■■■ Crusader 2.
Where’s the conspiracy? BL offered both of the vehicles you mention, without prejudice toward the success of either. The Crusader was produced until the early 1980s, alongside the Marathoin/Roadtrain, long after the sensible decision to rationalise could have been taken.
Carryfast:
windrush:
The terms ‘boy racer’ and ‘Triumph 2.5’ are strange bedfellows, I worked for a Triumph/Rover dealer and can’t recal anyone under 60 + actually owning one!Pete.
Boy racers didn’t have the cash to buy new ones or to take the things to main dealers to fix them although the local dealer to me ( Lancaster ) did make loads of money out of all the drive shaft/ rear wheel bearing assemblies they flogged me at trade price.Which was the thing’s main achilles heel and least when it was driven as it was designed to be.
So Triumph stroked the 2,000 engine to 2.5 and fitted it with more or less the first production fuel injection system running with individual throttle bodies and a 6 speed manual box all for the benefit of pensioners to drive to the post office to collect their pension.
Would that be the troublesome lucas injection that they later stopped fitting because it was too unreliable/expensive. You keep slagging off the sd1 hatchback if you look at the Triumph prototypes of that era some of those were hatchback,the dolomite replacement sd2 was going to have a hatchback in the range, because even your beloved Triumph could see that the paying customer would want to buy them. In ten years the sd1 sold over 303000 so someone must have liked them in contrast Triumph took fourteen years to sell almost 317000 cars. It was the Ford Granada that started to eat into the sales of the 2000 and it’s main rival the P6.
You do realise who you have to thank for your favourite car that would be Leyland trucks who took over the virtually bankrupt Standard Triumph motor company in 1961 and injected the cash to build it.
I think that’s something people forget Leyland were a successful profitable company buying into car production was there downfall the inclusion of BMC doing the most damage
Good God Carryfast, you do spew some tripe. The TL12 with intrrcooling would have easily achieved 320hp, with some other tweaks it would hit 350hp and with EDC 400hp would have been achievable, that’s what everyone else did with their 12litre engines. So give us all an insight to the engineering flaws that would have prevented Leyland doing the same with the TL12? Facts not your opinion please.
Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk
[zb]
anorak:Carryfast:
…My theory is that was conspiracy not ■■■■ up.Just like going for the TL12 narrow short sleeper TL12 Marathon and ‘low datum’ TL12 T45 instead of a Rolls/■■■■■■■ Crusader 2.Where’s the conspiracy? BL offered both of the vehicles you mention, without prejudice toward the success of either. The Crusader was produced until the early 1980s, alongside the Marathoin/Roadtrain, long after the sensible decision to rationalise could have been taken.
My point was why wouldn’t they have wanted to ‘replace’ the Crusader with an upgraded version.As opposed to having two flawed outdated products in the form of the Marathon and the old fixed cab Crusader.When logically the best option would have been to rationalise on a ‘new’ Crusader using a full width and decent sleeper SA 400 type cab and outsourced Rolls/■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ would then have had one competitive product good enough to keep both Scammell and AEC in business when they needed it.While the fact they chose to stagger on with both the Marathon and the old Crusader then replaced them with a crippled low datum short sleeper,TL12 only,T45,at the critical customer acceptance stage,seems to me to fit the same agenda as wrecking Rover and Triumph in the form of the SD1,Acclaim,and the 800. 
newmercman:
Good God Carryfast, you do spew some tripe. The TL12 with intrrcooling would have easily achieved 320hp, with some other tweaks it would hit 350hp and with EDC 400hp would have been achievable, that’s what everyone else did with their 12litre engines. So give us all an insight to the engineering flaws that would have prevented Leyland doing the same with the TL12? Facts not your opinion please.
I did give an insight into the ‘flaws’ more like flaw ( not enough leverage at the crank so more stress on the piston to crank component chain for any equivalent torque output ).IE let’s keep it real by concentrating on torque output,not power which can mean anything.So if Leyland really thought that they could get the equivalent specific torque of the ■■■■■■■ or Rolls or F12 or DAF DK from it without the thing grenading and thereby match the 7.0 mpg + even at 38t gross,efficiency of the ■■■■■■■ and Rolls,why didn’t they stay with it ?.
As for the car division.This is what Stokes said in an interview with Autocar magazine in 1973.‘‘We are going to put all our resources into making cars which are ‘better’’’.Bearing in mind that both the P6 2,000/V8 Rover and Triumph 2000/2.5 were well established and the biggest profit earners in the Leyland Group.‘‘The old Triumph team will probably concentrate on ‘sporting cars’ ( which obviously also logically meant the continuation of their ‘performance saloons’ ) and Rover people will probably concentrate on developing successors to the Rover and Triumph 2000’’.So what did they end up with by 1979.The ugly live axle SD1 hatchback which also somehow ended up nicking Triumph’s role by putting the V8 into a shopping car for pensioners and to add insult to injury the Triumph Vitesse name and Triumph ended up lumbered with the Acclaim.Then Triumph were gone by '84 and Rover went onto the fwd 800.The rest is history.IE he was just a Patsy in a deliberate plan of sabotage and sell out to the foreign competition. 
dazcapri:
Would that be the troublesome lucas injection that they later stopped fitting because it was too unreliable/expensive. You keep slagging off the sd1 hatchback if you look at the Triumph prototypes of that era some of those were hatchback,the dolomite replacement sd2 was going to have a hatchback in the range, because even your beloved Triumph could see that the paying customer would want to buy them. In ten years the sd1 sold over 303000 so someone must have liked them in contrast Triumph took fourteen years to sell almost 317000 cars. It was the Ford Granada that started to eat into the sales of the 2000 and it’s main rival the P6.
You do realise who you have to thank for your favourite car that would be Leyland trucks who took over the virtually bankrupt Standard Triumph motor company in 1961 and injected the cash to build it.
I think that’s something people forget Leyland were a successful profitable company buying into car production was there downfall the inclusion of BMC doing the most damage
You say that people wanted hatchbacks.Then you say that the Granada took sales from Rover yes maybe in the choice between the 4 cylinder Rover P6 v 6 cylinder Granada but not many people would have chosen a 3 litre Granada v a 3500 S Rover because the Granada was two cylinders and half a litre down although it had more space.While which Granada hatchback was that.Or for that matter which hatchback did BMW go for in the case of the E3 then the 5 series.When the fact is the Granada stayed with three box design saloon or like the Triumph a decent looking estate I should know because I had a 2.8i mk2 Granada estate.While BMW only offered the choice of three box styled saloon take it or leave it in both the E3 then the 5 series then only much later offering some reasonable looking estate versions and it obviously didn’t do them any harm.As for Leyland buying into car production being its downfall did you actually read the bit stating that Rover and Triumph were its largest profit earners at this point in time.
As for the SD1 selling.You seem to have missed the point that,unlike the original plan as described by Stokes,it had to replace the ‘combined’ sales of ‘both’ Rover ‘and’ Triumph.IE it might have found a few loyal ( mug ) previous Rover customers and a maybe few new hatchback conquest sales but it didn’t attract many if any Triumph buyers like me.Who went for BMW instead not because the BMW was better than a 3.5-4.6 V8 Triumph would have been.But because Triumph cars no longer existed as we knew it having eventually been turned over to production of the Acclaim and we certainly weren’t going to go for an ugly live rear axle hatchback SD1 even with the Rover V8 in it. As for the Lucas injection system that was obviously irrelevant and moot by 1976 regardless assuming that Leyland had put the Rover V8 where it belonged in the Triumph,instead of in the SD1,at least in the case of manual transmission cars.Although the thing has proved to be capable of still working fine if maintained properly in 2.5 Triumphs to date or even,as could have happened in the day,converted to electronic control.
As I said deliberate sabotage of the car division to the benefit of the foreign competition just as in the case of the truck division.
railstaff:
Has anybody got roadtests for an F88 290hp as that is a bit more fair.
Commercial Motor Scottish Road Test Route for Volvo F88 290 dated 21/02/1975
Overall Average Speed = 42.8 mph
Overall Average Fuel Consumption = 6.5 mpg
Identical payloads
Therefore a dead heat. The Volvo had a 16 speed gearbox, if that was advantageous■■?
However the Volvo as tested was £12,489 and the Marathon as tested 16 months earlier was £8,720. The Marathon price would have increased due to high inflation of the 1970s, probably by another £2,000 or so.
The same Volvo F88 was also run at 38 tons gvw around the test route and the average speed was a bit lower at 41.3 mph with average fuel consumption of 5.8 mpg.
Arguably Volvo hadn’t gained a lot, if anything, in performance terms with the F12.
[zb]
anorak:Carryfast:
…My theory is that was conspiracy not ■■■■ up.Just like going for the TL12 narrow short sleeper TL12 Marathon and ‘low datum’ TL12 T45 instead of a Rolls/■■■■■■■ Crusader 2.Where’s the conspiracy? BL offered both of the vehicles you mention, without prejudice toward the success of either. The Crusader was produced until the early 1980s, alongside the Marathoin/Roadtrain, long after the sensible decision to rationalise could have been taken.
Was the Marathon narrower than the Crusader?
ramone:
[zb]
anorak:Carryfast:
…My theory is that was conspiracy not ■■■■ up.Just like going for the TL12 narrow short sleeper TL12 Marathon and ‘low datum’ TL12 T45 instead of a Rolls/■■■■■■■ Crusader 2.Where’s the conspiracy? BL offered both of the vehicles you mention, without prejudice toward the success of either. The Crusader was produced until the early 1980s, alongside the Marathoin/Roadtrain, long after the sensible decision to rationalise could have been taken.
Was the Marathon narrower than the Crusader?
The relevant comparison in the case of an upgraded Crusader ‘2’ ( would have been ) the SA 400.Although even the Crusader ‘1’ seems to have been a full width cab by the standards of the day.
gingerfold:
railstaff:
Has anybody got roadtests for an F88 290hp as that is a bit more fair.Commercial Motor Scottish Road Test Route for Volvo F88 290 dated 21/02/1975
Overall Average Speed = 42.8 mph
Overall Average Fuel Consumption = 6.5 mpgIdentical payloads
Therefore a dead heat. The Volvo had a 16 speed gearbox, if that was advantageous■■?
However the Volvo as tested was £12,489 and the Marathon as tested 16 months earlier was £8,720. The Marathon price would have increased due to high inflation of the 1970s, probably by another £2,000 or so.
The same Volvo F88 was also run at 38 tons gvw around the test route and the average speed was a bit lower at 41.3 mph with average fuel consumption of 5.8 mpg.
Arguably Volvo hadn’t gained a lot, if anything, in performance terms with the F12.
So let’s assume that the Volvo F12’s results were accurate and not sand bagged.We know that the big cam 320 ■■■■■■■ and 300 + Rolls Eagle could provide 7.0 mpg + and faster journey times at 38t gross let alone 32t.How does that make the case for the TL12 v Rolls and ■■■■■■■ and more to the point how could the big cab and big power Rolls and ■■■■■■■ powered T45 then not possibly have taken out both the Volvo F12 and the DAF 2800/3300 and why did Leyland then close the doors on the operation just when they’d finally got the weapon in their armoury to get the job done ?.
Carryfast:
ramone:
Was the Marathon narrower than the Crusader?The relevant comparison in the case of an upgraded Crusader ‘2’ ( would have been ) the SA 400.Although even the Crusader ‘1’ seems to have been a full width cab by the standards of the day.
Edit to add the Crusader obviously didn’t need the silly small steering wheel while the Marathon did because there wasn’t clearance at the side for a decent sized one.
gingerfold:
railstaff:
Has anybody got roadtests for an F88 290hp as that is a bit more fair.Commercial Motor Scottish Road Test Route for Volvo F88 290 dated 21/02/1975
Overall Average Speed = 42.8 mph
Overall Average Fuel Consumption = 6.5 mpgIdentical payloads
Therefore a dead heat. The Volvo had a 16 speed gearbox, if that was advantageous■■?
However the Volvo as tested was £12,489 and the Marathon as tested 16 months earlier was £8,720. The Marathon price would have increased due to high inflation of the 1970s, probably by another £2,000 or so.
The same Volvo F88 was also run at 38 tons gvw around the test route and the average speed was a bit lower at 41.3 mph with average fuel consumption of 5.8 mpg.
Arguably Volvo hadn’t gained a lot, if anything, in performance terms with the F12.
Thank you for that.The only thing Volvo gained with the TD121(F12) was reliability.
Carryfast:
ramone:
[zb]
anorak:Carryfast:
…My theory is that was conspiracy not ■■■■ up.Just like going for the TL12 narrow short sleeper TL12 Marathon and ‘low datum’ TL12 T45 instead of a Rolls/■■■■■■■ Crusader 2.Where’s the conspiracy? BL offered both of the vehicles you mention, without prejudice toward the success of either. The Crusader was produced until the early 1980s, alongside the Marathoin/Roadtrain, long after the sensible decision to rationalise could have been taken.
Was the Marathon narrower than the Crusader?
The relevant comparison in the case of an upgraded Crusader ‘2’ ( would have been ) the SA 400.Although even the Crusader ‘1’ seems to have been a full width cab by the standards of the day.
Was the SA wider than the Marathon?
ramone:
Was the SA wider than the Marathon?
It seems to have been a full width cab although Stevie Wonder might disagree. 
c1.staticflickr.com/8/7149/6814 … 9766_b.jpg
Which leaves the question why the need for the miniature steering wheel in the Marathon ?.
Carryfast:
ramone:
Was the SA wider than the Marathon?It seems to have been a full width cab although Stevie Wonder might disagree.
c1.staticflickr.com/8/7149/6814 … 9766_b.jpg
Which leaves the question why the need for the miniature steering wheel in the Marathon ?.
So what were the dimensions of the Marathon and the SA?