trucking heritage
FABULOUS FLOPS
This pandemic has done many things, not least given some people too much time to wonder about things they mightn’t ordinarily think about. Dud trucks, for example. We often hear stories of old classics but what about the makes and models that didn’t quite light the fires of fame and fanfare? Steve Brooks takes a short trip down a memory lane littered with a few glaring lowlights
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N TIME, some trucks become classics. Others don’t, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they were duds. No, the real duds are those shockers that take on a heritage all their own. Remembered, you might say, for all the wrong reasons. So now, with the pandemic providing a little too much time to think about the past rather than the present, and enough experience to recount the makes and models that have maintained a deservedly dark and critical crevice in this commentator’s cranium, here are a few carefully considered lesser lights from the commercial vehicle vault. I must stress, however, these opinions are my own and I accept there may be those with an opposite view of these maligned machines. But somehow, I doubt it. On the other hand, there may be those who have their own tortured memories of trucks they consider even worse than those mentioned here. Funny thing though, it’s probably much easier to define a dud truck than a good truck. Like, after more than 40 years writing about trucks and road transport I’m sometimes asked: “What’s the best truck you reckon you’ve ever driven?” Quite seriously, there’s no easy answer to that because so much depends on the job and even the era. For instance, how could you rate a big banger pulling three or four trailers through the heat and heavy sand of Western Australia’s
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pindan country to the demands of a slick interstater notching big distances up and down the east coast or across the trans-continental paddock? Or a comparison between a modern medium-duty truck with its swathe of safety systems and creature comforts, and a machine like Isuzu’s remarkable SBR: a very basic model by today’s standards but one that did more to put Japanese trucks on the map in this country than any other? No, ‘the best truck’ question has no easy answer at all. A question with much easier answers would be: “What are the worst trucks you’ve come across?” Vastly easier. Indeed, they can even be split into respective weight divisions – light-duty, medium-duty and heavy-duty, with a few ‘honourable mentions’ thrown in. In fact, there’s even an outright winner. The worst truck by far, hands-down, is an absolute shocker, but we’ll get to that.
Not-so heavy hitter Starting at the big end, there’s just one stand-out winner. Leyland Marathon! Back in the late ’70s when Leyland believed it still had a future in Australian road transport, the Marathon was brought here for a benign attempt to rekindle the dying Pommie powerhouse’s past glories. As something of a young buck with the once esteemed Truck & Bus Transportation magazine, I often rode shotgun with our regular test driver
ownerdriver.com.au
24/02/2021 11:37:35 AM
