I by Toby Clark mong the new MANs that we
Page 15
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
rove last week (see page 17) tere was a wild card: a truck -ore MAN's Polish subsidiary tar, which builds a range of ehicles called the 82000. hese use the same basic Steyrerived cab as the L2000, with ,1AN's own engines and ZF earboxes.
We'll be seeing much more of le Star S2000 in the UK soon: ERF will be importing and rebadging 15 and 12-tonne variants to expand its product range.
So what's it like? We drove a 12.157 version: a 4x2 rigid plated at 12 tonnes GVW with a Euro-2 variant of the 153hp, four-pot MAN D0624 engine and a sixspeed ZF S6-36 gearbox.
First impressions were fine—after all, it uses a wellliked, well-designed cab with the familiar MAN dashboard— though some of the interior fit and finish was not up to MAN standards. At speed its rattles and shakes were much more evident than in the other trucks we drove: the latest Daf and Iveco middleweights have little to fear from Star.
However, the Star's real let-down was its engine, which seemed to suffer from a serious lack of power without any sign of the Euro-3 engine's reserves of torque. Hewing it hard was the only way to make any progress, and even then it was left well behind by the other vehicles in the MAN test group.
The gearbox didn't help either, suffering from a couple of large gaps in the gearing; even so, top gear was none too tall, with 1,900rpm needed to sustain 80km/h.
At least the brakes were good, with discs front and rear giving 21st century-standard stopping power.
We might have driven a rogue example (which hardly seems likely) but it appears that ERF will have to take a good look at the Star before attaching its badge to the grille.