[zb]
anorak:
Carryfast:
Sadly for the British truck manufacturing industry they did listen to their (domestic market) customers and provided what those customers were asking for because as I’ve said,contrary to the ideas of the British government,there’s no way of exporting your way out of trouble if you haven’t got the home market on your side first.So they had no option but to listen to what their customers wanted.Which more often than not was a request for another day cabbed Gardner powered Atki or whatever but this time we’ll upgrade to 180 power from the 150. 
I agree with this in the sense that, during the 1950s, the GB manufacturers did indeed place a narrow focus on home and colonial markets. I do not agree that they needed to “get the home market on their side first”, before exploring exports to central Europe. The two goals should have been given priority according to the potential advantages (and disadvantages) in the long term. The two markets’ requirements were not necessarily mutually exclusive- it was not a catch 22, as you say later. For example, if Leyland’s LAD cab (1958) had been designed to compete with Mercedes, MAN et al- larger, with a standard factory sleeper- they would have been equipped to compete in all markets. Most GB customers may have insisted on a day cab version, but those who started to drift towards imports towards the end of the '60s would have had a competive British product to buy. This may have answered Monsieur Saviem’s complaint that the manufacturers did not listen to the users.
Firstly the British domestic market certainly wasn’t generally ‘drifting’ towards anything much more advanced than those day cabbed Gardner powered offerings from Foden,ERF,and Atkis etc even well into the 1970’s let alone the towards the end of the 1960’s.
As for Leyland it was the T 45 that was as good as it got and showed the hopeless situation of the rate of development of it’s products compared to DAF.
The fact is the British truck industry was around 10-20 years behind in development and that time lag was due solely to the demands of it’s home market.All of the exports from the European truck manufacturing industry were based on having ■■■■■■■■■■ of their respective home markets first and the same applied here.However that ■■■■■■■■■■ here depended on meeting the backward,out of date,demands of the British customers and there was no way that the potential European export markets would have provided sufficient potential sales and revenues to have made the required leap in development required viable,let alone the problems of requiring a two tier different production capacity for the more advanced export products and the backward heaps still needed to satisfy the domestic market at the time,even if it had been viable to spend the amounts needed on development costs.
Saviem has already admitted that the reason,for the differences in the design of American trucks,and British trucks,was all a matter of the differences in the demands that existed in their home markets and the same applied to the European ones just as I’ve said.However unfortunately for the British truck industry those demands here were a liability not an asset unlike in the case of American and to a lesser,slightly more delayed extent,the European and Scandinavian products.
As I’ve said the only way that the British culd have made up the lost ground in time to compete head on with the more advanced European products that came through during the 1970’s was by large scale change in production to British built American trucks like Kenworths just as was proved in the old colonial markets of Australia and New Zealand.
However the fact is if we had have done that at the time when it mattered those trucks wouldn’t have then sold on the domestic market here in large numbers for at least around another 5-10 years when the British customers finally came to their senses and there wouldn’t have been sufficient potential sales in Europe to make the operation viable at any stage because they were already working on their own products and as Saviem has shown because of the unfounded market resistance to American trucks in Europe.Although maybe that situation might have gradually changed after we’d have established American truck manufacture in the longer term.
The only way that the British truck manufacturing industry could have survived was by ditching the outdated British designs and going over to British built American ones.However that only would have worked ‘if’ customer demands in the domestic market,and even better in the European markets too at some stage,had been the same as those in New Zealand,and there were absolutely no real reasons as to why that shouldn’t have been the case. 
but as I’ve said the Scammell Commander was the exception that proved the rule,about the inferiority of British trucks.It also proved that inferiority was nothing to do with those working in the British truck manufacturing industry.It actually proved what the British can do when the customer knows what they are odering and what’s actually needed for the job.It doesn’t take a genius to know that it’s design criterea was never going to be the cheapest option and it’s equally obvious that the Oshkosh replacement is just a cut price alternative. Which is no real reflecton on it’s US manufacturers just as the result of what Scammell (would) have turned out ‘if’ the firm had survived and ‘if’ it was subject to a similar cut price design criterea such as using an old Detroit 8 V 92 to do the job of a zb great big V 12.Which actually shows how good the old Detroit was considering it’s size and the job it’s having to do.But you can bet if the Scandinavians or the Europeans really could teach the Americans anything it’s a Scania V 8 that it would have in it not an old so called ‘Green Leaker’.
