Leyland Ash:
Carryfast:
… Realistically,bearing in mind the levels of investment which would have been required,to keep the totally conflicting markets satisfied,at the time in question,it would have been a financial impossibility.In real world terms that realistically meant having to compete with firms like KW in our old colonial markets bearing in mind the difference in levels of investment and the fact that the demands of the US domestic market being much closer to those of it’s export markets.
The common link being that at the end of the day the British truck manufacturing industry’s continuing export success was totally dependent on firstly the amount of investment capital available to develop the products required,which isn’t the same thing as revenues and profits in the export markets because investment is just a measure of how much of those profits that the bankers were willing to plough back into the industry and the amount of capital available to the nations economy and banking system as a whole…
Carryfast,
OK, if I understand you correctly, what you are saying is that Leyland did not have sufficient funds to develop its (existing) products. That is in principle a viable argument but in order to prove it one would need to see Leyland’s 1950s books, so as to appraise what was its EBIDTA and, again, its net earnings including a breakdown of what went where. If you have the figures to back the theory, please provide. However, allow me to remain skeptical. This would mean that Leyland was practically on the verge of insolvency in the 1950s (!), before Standard Triumph/AEC and so on. Please remember you are talking about the world’s largest bus producer whose truck output was also big (bigger than Volvo, Scania-Vabis, Fiat etc. etc.). Size wise Leyland was bigger than Pacific Car & Foundry/KW/Peterbilt, so again the odds are against what you say. Yes, the US market was closer to some of the colonial markets but I defy anyone to say that the changes which had to be made to the bonneted Beaver/Hippo (for example) were such as to put a manufacturer the size of Leyland under a strain (Joey box behind the 6sp, careful, incremental, up-rating of the 680 (like DAF did) were not going to break the bank).
And, once more: the combined markets I referred to were larger than the European market. There was a business opportunity and somehow it went over management’s head. My feeling is that, psychologically, it did not occur to the fossils at the top that conditions after WWII changed and that many markets were no longer captive - they just assumed the colonials, South Americans et al would continue to flock to Leyland (or AEC) forever. Dealers and customers were told to shut up or ignored. This is a classic case of management SNAFU, not a desperate act of a barely-solvent company - what you described was right perhaps later, but even then they somehow managed to waste time and money on dead-end alleys like the AEC V8 and that most insane idea of them all, the headless wonder, whereas if they developed the existing line in a “boring” DAF/Volvo manner, they would have had the needed engines at a far lower cost (no reason why a 400 with 175 hp, a 680 with 300 hp and a 900 with 400-450 hp should not have been available in say 1972).
Cheers
L
There’s something in your last para that rings bells. I should say from the outset that I am a long way from being any kind of expert and that what I have learned comes from my understanding of what others have written, so if I’ve got it wrong please chime in. However… It seems to me that one example of (but by no means the only one) “What Went Wrong?” can be found in the selling and development of the Leyland 0.680. As far as I can tell this was a mainstay of not just lorries but also British bus chassis (think Leyland Tiger and Leopard buses and coaches, Leyland Atlantean/ Daimler Fleetline double deckers, Bristol RE, even 0.680 engined Bristol VRs - all of them extremely common on British high streets and motorways throughout the 70s and 80s). Yet it was DAF who first developed the 0.680 (that became its DKS1160) and look what happened there - hundreds of thousands (millions?) of 2800/3300/3600 units and MB200 bus chassis sold, while Leyland took another decade to come up with the TL11. Why? Why did it take Leyland so long to wake up? Why did DAF see potential where Leyland didn’t (and in its own product)?
Speaking of exports, Leyland engines and Leyland attitudes. As I understand it, back in the 70s Christchurch City (and for all I know, other loyal but distant customers in NZ) wanted a big order of Bristol RE bus chassis. To the uninitiated, the Bristol RE single decker was a huge success in Britain in the late 60s and early 70s (production stopped in the early 80s). It could be bought in short, medium or long chassis, with high (for coach work) or low floor (for bus work) versions, and could be spec’d with Gardner 6HLX or Leyland 0.600 or 0.680 engines. It was the backbone of many a bus fleet - especially during the early NBC era - and anyone who was around in the 70s who rode a single decker bus would have been on one (they are also one of the most musical buses ever invented). Sometime in the 70s, NZ, being loyal Leyland customers (much more so than Oz, as far as I can tell) wanted the RE and in big numbers, preferably with the Gardner. Again, as far as I understand it, by this time Leyland had control of Bristol and would only supply RE chassis with 0.510 engines. ChCh bought them under duress, then later when they couldn’t fix them any more fitted MAN engines, and partly due to Leyland’s intransigence and partly better deals on offer elsewhere subsequently standardised on MAN or Mercedes-Benz. At about the same time (1970s), Sydney Public Transport Commission (later Sydney UTA, now Sydney Buses) was looking to start a replacement programme for its big fleet of ageing Leyland Leopards (over the years Sydney bought 745 of them, one of the best overseas chassis/ engine orders Leyland ever had). When Leyland could not or would not come up with anything suitable, Sydney PTC went to Mercedes-Benz and became the biggest single overseas customer for its O305 bus chassis M-B ever had (Sydney only recently withdrew the last of them which would have been 25 years old at least). The Leyland 0.510 is best known in bus circles as the clattering clag monster that was fitted to the Leyland National bus, the design that the National Bus Company (that had swallowed dozens of previously independent operators like Crosville, Southdown, Midland Red and Western National) had decided would become the standard single decker bus in the 1970s, replacing various Leylands, Bristols and AECs that were all in their own ways perfectly serviceable vehicles that - while they needed updating - were available in enough variants (short, medium long, high/ low floor, standard width or narrow, rear engine or mid-engine underfloor) to keep their owners happy. Instead operators got something that didn’t meet their requirements, that most drivers didn’t like and was by all accounts a bit of a pig to keep running (a fixed head engine stuck in the arse end of a bus probably isn’t the acme of serviceable design).
Ironically, most bus operators I know of who were running fleets in the 70s and early 80s actually liked the National Mk2, as by that time Leyland had finally fixed some of its inherent bad traits (too little weight over the front axle leading to brake lock-up, steering with the accuracy of a dowsing rod), and ditched the 0.510 “headless wonder”. In its place they offered … (wait for it…) the 0.680 (and eventually the TL11, itself a development of [yes, you guessed it] the 0.680), and in an application as relatively light as a big single decker it was both gutsy and reliable, and most operators already knew the unit well. Doubly ironic is the fact that many bus operators had experimented with fitting other engines to the original National Mk1 in an effort to keep them going, including Gardner 6HLXB and, most successfully of all, DAF’s 11.6l lump (yes, that one). Again, why? Why did Leyland ignore what some (most?) of its biggest customers wanted? Why did it insist everybody took a standardised bus that might work well in an average operation when most big operators ran routes that were anything but standard? Why annoy some of your biggest overseas customers when the money was there for the taking (Sydney went on to buy 1,300 O305s from M-B and then went on to its successors)?
(PS don’t get me wrong, I have a soft spot for the National as I first got interested in wagons and buses in the mid-late 70s when the National was clagging up every high street, and even now I can hear its typical clattering whine)
Bewick.
,in that they’d prefer a Scandinavian or Euro box with a zb synchro box in it than something like an SA 400/401 with a big power ■■■■■■■ and 13 speed fuller in it anyway even if their guvnors had bought them. 
