660 horses a smooth ride

BY GRAHAM HARSANT

WHEN the phone buzzes and the email says it’s from Scania, my hand goes to open it up almost before my mind has finished reading the headline. Hopefully they want to put me into something, I think to myself.

Yes, they do, with an invitation to go for a run in their R660, one of a range of the company’s glorious V8s. “Absolutely”, is my immediate response. I’ve always loved the way these trucks drive, and feel, and look, and particularly, sound.

The R660 (which denotes the horsepower) sits second from the top of the V8 range which kicks off with the 530. Those 660 horses match just about any other manufacturer’s donk, but Scania goes one further – to the top of the horsepower tree with the mighty V8 rumble of their R770.

The R660 adopts the latest Opticruise Gearbox as does the rest of the range, barring the R770, simply because that engine has too much grunt for the ‘box at the moment. Expect that to be rectified in the near future.

Behind me is a B-double with Scania’s Griffin emblazoned on the tautliner’s side and 60-plus tonnes of ballast on board.

Oh, there’s also ‘Driver Under Instruction’ plates fore and aft, because after some 14 years with an HC licence, I still haven’t gotten off my lazy backside and moved on up to an MC.

That’s not to say I haven’t driven a B-double before – I have many times; I’m just not as adept as the rest of you.

I’m joined on this trip by Lindsay Pollock, one of Scania’s driver trainers, and as it happens, an almost neighbour of mine, coming as he does from Shepparton.

In a past life, Pollock spent a couple of years as a driving instructor with DECCA Driver Training, so I’m pretty conscious of doing all the right things – dredging my own DECCA-trained memories to the surface.

We leave Scania’s Laverton base and head out onto the always busy Boundary Road, over and around numerous roundabouts before hitting the wide open spaces on the freeway to Ballarat.

Want to know when this occasional B-double driver started feeling comfortable behind the wheel? I reckon it took me all of a minute. Seriously, the truck is that good!

Driving many and varied prime movers, one of the first things I do is to line up something in the cab with the white line on my right. It may be the corner of the A pillar, something on the dash or even a speck on the windscreen. This simply to keep me in the middle of the lane and avoid the dreaded and usually VERY LOUD Lane Departure Warning from constantly harassing me.

Not in this truck!

I’ve gone through all those roundabouts, merged lanes, traversed a couple of narrow roads, and am well up the freeway before I realise that I haven’t set off the LDW at all and that I’ve not organised a ‘line of sight’.

I’ve simply got in and driven – such is the confidence that this truck gives you. And I think that this makes the case for Scania even more compelling, because this truck is just a breeze to drive.

Getting into the nitty-gritty, the V8 displaces 16.4 litres, putting out those 660 horses at 1900rpm and 3300Nm from 950 – 1400rpm. The gearbox is Scania’s latest overdrive 14-speed Opticruise fully automated gear-change with Eco-roll.

Seventy kilos lighter thanks to being smaller and cased in aluminium, the latest Opticruise does away with reverse gear, instead locking the planetary gears at the back which effectively put the whole gearbox in reverse – not that you’ll get those 14 gears of course.

Gear changes are so quick and so smooth that you’ll have to look at the dash info to see the truck moving up through the range. There’s a choice of Economy, Standard or Power modes (ex-factory) which is nice of Scania to offer and I suppose I should have played with them all in the interest of full reporting. But I forgot. The truck did all I could ask of it, uphill and down dale – but the choice is there should you desire it.

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