New New Seddons for UK and Europe
Page 6
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by the Technical Editor A EUROPEAN VERSION of the Seddon Atkinson 400 Series —announced today : full description page 68—will be produced later this year. Belgium, Holland and Denmark will be the first export targets, with France next on the list, for the European truck.
This was announced by Mr Geoffrey Redmond, joint md of the group, at a press showing of the new range. He refuted any suggestion that the 400 Series would be marketed in the USA by International Harvester (which took control of the group last June) or that there would be joint marketing with DAF, in which IH also has a financial stake.
After the announcement I was able to have a brief test drive in several examples of the range at the MVEE test track at Chobham. Although there were five vehicles at the track not all were fully laden, but at least it gave me the chance to try some nonCummins engined variants after our extensive test of such an example.
The eight-wheeler is basically the already well-proven Atkinson chassis fitted with the new S A cab. This particular example was fitted with a Cravens Homalloy body and laden to "just over or about 30 tons." As it was literally a brand new vehicle which had barely turned a wheel before the test, most of my impressions were coloured by the stiffness of the various components, particularly the gear change.
Fitted with a 6LXB Gardner engine coupled to a David Brown six-speed box, the eightwheeler was by far the quietest of the trucks I tested, but I felt that an extra two gears would come in handy. I do not think six gears gives an adequate spread for 30-ton operation with only 134kW (183.5bhp) available.
With a clear track I managed to do some standing start acceleration tests and the truck managed 0-30'mph in 39 seconds and 0-40mph in 68 seconds, which is about average for such a specification.