Lorries of Arabia 3: ERF NGC E-Book

Robert Hackford

• Herausgeber: Old Pond Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 87

Beschreibung

A must for all ERF fans, this is the third and final installment in The Lorries of Arabia series. While the first book paid tribute to ERF's world-class long-haulers in the Middle East and those who drove them and the second book went on to explore the fortunes of this legendary machine, this final volume is a continued narration of an unfolding history in the 1970s and 1980s of a premium tractive unit model. With new findings, new details, new insights, and new pictures, readers of the first two books will surely enjoy the final volume of this acclaimed series. Containing a full register of all the 91 NGCs known to have ever been built, this is the enthusiast's guide to the rugged, reliable, left-hand drive tractive unit forever associated with long-haul European and Middle Eastern routes of the 70s and 80s.

Leseprobe

Lorries of Arabia 3

Old Pond Publishing is an imprint of Fox Chapel Publishers International Ltd.

Project Team

Vice President—Content: Christopher Reggio

Associate Publisher: Sarah Bloxham

Layout: David Exley, www.beamreachuk.co.uk

Photos as credited in the text

Copyright © 2019 by Robert Hackford and Fox Chapel Publishers International Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Fox Chapel Publishers, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

Print ISBN 978-1-912158-36-2eISBN 978-1-913618-16-2

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Fox Chapel Publishing

903 Square Street

Mount Joy, PA 17552, USA

www.oldpond.com

Fox Chapel Publishers International Ltd.

7 Danefield Road, Selsey (Chichester)

West Sussex PO20 9DA, U.K.

We are always looking for talented authors. To submit an idea, please send a brief inquiry to [email protected].

CONTENTS

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Introduction: ERF’s Long-Haul Pioneer

Why Wasn’t a Domestic Right-Hand Drive NGC Produced?

In Europe: King of the Mountains

ERF, Sand & Stars: Middle East

ERF NGCs in Art

Late News

Finale

Revised ERF NGC Register

List of NGCs on Middle East Work

Publications in Which ERF NGCs Are Featured

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

(Photo: Gary Corbishley)

Robert Hackford (born 1952) started out as a school teacher, progressing to a headship quite early on. However, mid-career he opted for a change and became a TIR driver instead. After doing Europe for a while, a trip to Turkey whetted his appetite for long-haul work and he subsequently spent a number of years driving to North Africa. He made a handful of Astran trips to the Arabian Gulf driving an Iveco Eurostar with a manual constant-mesh gearbox, as far afield as Doha in Qatar. For Robert, each new trip was an adventure with a sense of achievement at the end of it. He even ran his own unit and trailer for a while. During the ’90s he often wrote articles for the various truck magazines. Robert returned to teaching, first in Istanbul then Rome and eventually in Cairo where he served as the head of a British International School before retiring in 2014. He is the author of Lorries of Arabia: ERF NGC, published by Old Pond in 2015; and Lorries of Arabia 2: ERF NGC, published in 2016.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Marc Van Steenbergen: Belgian haulier. Wobbe Reitsma, Hans Witte: Dutch transport historians. Rene Tanner: Swiss transport historian. Ken Broster: former general manager for Trans Arabia in Jeddah. Gary Corbishley: restorer and owner of KCH 95N. Rene Postma: erstwhile owner of the same unit. Jerry Cooke: former NGC driver and mechanic for Trans Arabia. Vince Cooke: former S Jones driver. Bill Fitzsimons: former ERF field engineer. Dave Wallace: former NGC driver for John Simmons. John Davies: mechanic for Trans Arabia. Mick Jones: Trans Arabia. Alan Rickett: ERF publicity officer. Chris Jeffries: operations manager and ex-driver at Eric Vick. Manal Maseras: transport artist. Graham Beech, Roy Mead, Pod Robinson, Adrian Cyper, ‘Chepstowechap’, Ady Goodman, Paul Gee, Gerdi Kimpe, David Pilcher, Mark Bailey, Bjorn Kjer, Ted Croswell, Stephen John Heward, Alan Ball: transport photographers.

In particular, I wish to acknowledge Dean Bartlett, an international driver and blogging transport historian, for his tireless research efforts in support of this volume.

(Photo: Dave Wallace)

(Photo: Alan Rickett)

INTRODUCTION: ERF’S LONG-HAUL PIONEER

(Photo: ERF promo)

The gentleman standing next to the NGC in the picture above is Peter Foden, who was the man in charge when the model was conceived.

The rugged NGC ‘European’ 42-tonner with its Cummins 335, 9-speed Fuller ‘box, left-hand drive and legendary reliability was ERF’s flash of brilliance. Herewith, my third book on this subject, in which I continue to narrate an unfolding history of a premium tractive unit model that for some years lay forgotten in time. As with the second book in this series, I have carefully avoided repetition. Where I have broached previously mentioned subjects, I have done so only to provide context for newly discovered material. This volume provides new details, new findings, new insights and new pictures relating to the ERF NGC. Since the previous books, evidence of most, if not all, of the 91 NGCs known to have been built have come to light. These can be found in the revised NGC register at the back of this volume.

(From ERF Earls Court 1974 brochure)

Usually, when writing a monograph about a vintage lorry, history throws up more and more variants of that model, the deeper one delves. Remarkably, the more I researched the NGC model for this Lorries of Arabia: ERF NGC series, the simpler and cleaner its specification became, thus resulting in fewer variants. Indeed, the NGCs that left ERF’s factory in Sandbach have proved to be far more uniform than I was originally led to believe when I was researching Book 1. Of course, the working histories of each individual unit appeared progressively more complicated the more I probed, but that is a separate issue.

For a start, many of the variants and options suggested in ERF’s brochures never reached fruition there were in practice no NGCs with straight-framed chassis or Gardner engines, for example. Furthermore, all the 6x4 examples have been shown to be retrospective; none having left the factory with double-drive. Indeed, only three of the NGCs known at the time of writing were converted from standard 4x2 NGCs. One of these was the vehicle supplied to Cauvas in France (pictured in Book 1), which we now know was supplied in 4x2 form and converted to 6x4 later (more details of this in the European section).

This makes the standard ERF NGC a very pure breed indeed: LHD, tilting 7MW sleeper cab, 14-litre Cummins NTC 335 engine, 9-speed Fuller ’box and D85 hub-reduction rear axle. All were Euro-spec (and were therefore all ‘Europeans’); and all were 4x2 (6x4s were later conversions). Basically, there was just a standard NGC unit.

The only factory variant was the relatively rare NGC with a Cummins 290 lump with a 13-speed Fuller, and reports of two having been fitted with naturally aspirated NHC 250s. I find this degree of uniformity in an ERF model of the period quite remarkable, especially as all of its many 70s stablemates had a wide range of significant variations regarding chassis options, cabs, engines, gearboxes, LHD/RHD, UK-spec/Euro-spec, etc.

The ERF NGC with its taller, roomier, better appointed tilting 7MW cab simply overtook 5MW versions from 1973 onwards, though the cheaper 5MW options remained available alongside both the NGC ‘European’ and the B-series.

(Photo: ERF promo)

When it came to competing with the opposition for a long-haul 1970s tractive unit, ERF definitely got it right the first time round with this great British-built/assembled icon of early trans-European trucking.

(Photo: Advert from TRUCK magazine)

I am sometimes asked why I chose to write books only about the ERF NGC — the one with the boxy 7MW cab — and not about all the other Motor Panels MW-cabbed ERF models with the squatter, more rounded fixed (non-tilting) cab with the split windscreen. Good question. The fact is, as previously stated, the NGC model had almost no variants. The smaller, rounded cab models with the split windscreen, however, are a proper minefield but deserve one day to be written about. There were several variants of that short Motor Panels Mk 4 cab (3MW/5MW, 4MW/6MW, etc.); there were two different front axle positions; there were several variants of chassis (including the RHD 5MW-cabbed A-series); there were 4x2 or 6x4 options; there were RHD or LHD options; there were at least seven different engine options in various capacities from Cummins, Rolls Royce and Gardner; there were at least four different gearbox options in various configurations from David Brown and Fuller; there were light or heavy options; and models could be spec’d differently for European export, Middle East export, New Zealand export or domestic UK use.

(Photo: Martin Phippard/Richard Stanier collection)

In the end I firmly decided to stick only with the NGC for my books as it was certainly the tidier project and in any case it fulfilled my original mission to demonstrate that it was a premium long-hauler. It was, too, a significantly different model from the earlier models, having been designed by ERF’s then recently appointed chief engineer, Jack Cooke. Indeed, one of the comments Pat Kennett made in his 1975 Euro-Test, which included an ERF NGC, for TRUCK magazine was, ‘It’s hard to recognise the ERF European as being based on the old familiar Motor Panels steel cab structure. If the Sandbach engineers can make such a good job of this cab, imagine what they’ll do with the B-series when the European version appears.’

(Cover of TRUCK magazine)

The NGC definitely hit the big time when it was featured with a glamour girl on the front page of TRUCK magazine! That NGC was shown on stand 87 of the Earls Court show in 1974, about which Commercial Motor magazine gave a very useful description in its 20 September issue, as follows:

The 42-ton-gtw tractive unit, the ERF European, is also new to Earls Court although it made its public debut at the 1973 Brussels Show. The sleeper-type cab is totally different from the B-series, being panelled in steel on a steel sub-frame, and many of these vehicles are already operating in France, Belgium and Holland. The engine is one of the larger Cummins units, the turbocharged NTC 335, which develops 237kW (317 bhp) at 2,100rpm and a maximum torque of 1,261Nm (930 lb ft) at 1,500rpm. The rear axle is of 13-tonne (12.8-ton) capacity while the front is plated at 6.5 tonnes (6.4 tons). Telescopic dampers are specified front and rear. Compared to the normal 270-litre fuel tank on the UK B-series, the European tractor has a capacity of 360 litres (80 gal). The wheelbase is slightly longer at 3.8 m (11 ft 2 in) compared with 3.0 m (9 ft 10 in).

(From ERF handbook)

The drawing above is from the driver’s handbook and shows the preformed centre console with provision for the reachable storage of a driver’s belongings. It incorporated a cigar lighter, lockable glove compartment, map stowage and ash tray. Space was available for the fitting of a shaver power point and hand lamp.

There is a fascinating twenty-minute documentary made by Freelance Directors Productions, called ERF 1974