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CHOP CHOP
Page 9
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• Takeovers always mean that somebody, somewhere, gets hurt. As West German truck builder MAN takes an 80% stake in Austria's ailing Steyr Daimler Puch operation this week, spare a thought for Steyr U.K and its newly-formed dealer and distributor network. It seems that they are about to learn that rationalisation is a long and innocuous word for something far more short, sharp and shocking. . . the chop.
The British truck industry has had to get used to rationalisation in the eighties. Leyland and Daf have merged, so have Iveco and Ford and Bedford has gone forever, leaving the much smaller and impressively plucky AWD in its place. The bloodletting goes on.
Steyr obviously needed to break out of Austria and "grow" its business. Heavy losses pushed the company into a do-or-die position, and its announcement in January 1988 that it was coming to the UK looking for new markets smacked of necessity being the mother of invention.
MAN already has a well-established dealer and distributor network in the UK and although Cliff Groves, Steyr UK's amiable managing director, has picked his network with care and built it up to a respectable tally of 17 outlets in just over a year, the future does not look rosy. To survive in the late 1980s, you need to be fit, lean and hungry.
Michael Hanson, the chairman of Steyr UK's dealer association, formed just two months ago, gamely says that MAN is "underfranchised" in certain areas and could benefit from some new dealerships in key locations. Let's hope there is some positive news over the next few weeks for worried dealers.
The positive attractions for the two truck companies, however, are a way out of economic ruin for Steyr (with future employment for its factory workers) and new production capacity for MAN. The majority of Steyr's range may ultimately disappear, but at least MAN says that the medium-range cab (currently sold to ERF) will be fitted to the MAN G90 range.
Probably the most worrying aspect of the deal, however, is that it will not be the last battle of the rationalisation war for Europe's truck builders. As the market begins to dip and the boom years of the middecade fade away, further chops look likely.
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