Monday, January 23, 2006

The last British truck, how long?

Saw an article recently regarding the demise of Foden, and how long ERF would last past that. FOund some figures that may shed some light. Before it gets further, the reason PAccar pulled the plug on Foden was new registrations were low, and there's really no point when the Foden shares everything with DAF sans engine. Likewise with ERF, the share MAN's platform, but only with cummins engines. Well, rumor has it Cummins couldn't make Euro 4, which throws the only engine into ERFs either the Cummins CE or BE engine, or MAN engines. Well, the CE and BE are common rail engines that are available in DAF, IVECO, MAN, and most likely more, and only for medium duty work. With the MAN engine the only choice available for heavy work, how long will it be before MAN decides that budgets are too tight to be messing around with name badge engineering, and axe the name that was .1% of total British sales behind Foden, which had 1.2%, or 705 new trucks sold. ERF had 669. If Paccar thought it prudent to axe Foden, would it be equally as prudent to axe ERF? my guess says yes, it does, it would make financial sense, but sad to see the last British Marque die, even if it only exists by name now. See BLB for stats and info.

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