BIRD'S EYE VIEW
Page 23
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BY THE HAWK
With the whole motor industry flocking to the Motor Show, there was plenty of prey for the Hawk to swoop on . . .
1 Haulier Bob Brady bought 4ercedes" showpiece 38-tonne ruck at the Motor Show last week for the third year runing.
Brady, managing director of Iarrow-in-Furness-based 1' Irady and Son, signed-up the 448 Mercedes — list price 73,600 and dubbed "the rucker's truck" by the manuacturer.
Brady, who has depots in Ieysham, West Bromwich, iorthfleet, Bridgewater and Sarrow, bought a showpiece Ryland Beaver with tilt cab at is first motor show at Earl's urt, when he was 17.
The 80-year-old company :oes a lot of work for the 4inistry of Defence, as well as pneral haulage. "With the 4oD work, you can't afford Teakdowns or to have vehicles If the road," he says.
Brady's top-of-the-range 4ercedes will be fitted with an 690 tank. He says that ■ uying the Mercedes showiece vehicle has become "a bit f a tradition."
1 Never let me complain abet how busy the truck hall is gain. Your foot and wingveary Hawk, tired of the rowds in the HGV and lightran halls, decided to find solace a quiet place. Through a last Loorway there seemed space plenty.
What a mistake. . . too late x. a U-turn I'd walked smack Fang into the car halls.
Hardened hacks have been educed to quivering wrecks fter just 10 minutes in the car ails where hordes of children it from stand to stand like ngry bees collecting whatever tickers/bags/caps/posters are eing given out. Frustrate hem and they turn nasty.
Indeed, the Hawk has a heory that if manufacturers ke AWD, which exhibit militry vehicles at NEC, can surive an onslaught of eight-yearIds, then a full-scale battle will e like a quiet Sunday afteroon stroll in comparison. • MAN has been less than impressed with security at the NEC this year. Two of the trucks it left on its stand overnight on 'Sunday were mysteriously attacked by vandals.
According to MAN spokesman Andrew Seacombe, doors on both of the vehicles had deep "gouges" scratched into them before anyone got to work trimming the stand on Monday morning.
MAN acted fast. Both doors were whipped off in a trice, taken away for a respray and fitted back to the trucks by Monday night.
"What price security here?" asks Seacombe. One thing's for sure, Jaguar will not be too impressed if the same vandal strolls round to the big cat's stand. Modest and informed guesstimates at the show reckon the new XJ220 speedster would cost a cool 2300,000 if you wanted to put it on the road. Scratch'n'sniff indeed.
• Motor Show week was a week for changing faces at the top of Britain's truck manufacturers. At Seddon Atkinson, Vic Wilkes took over the reins from Gerry Woodhead, and seemed to be enjoying spending his first week as MD meeting his public on the SA stand.
The other change was a bit more subtle. At the beginning of the week, Foden managing director Mark Pigott slipped quietly out of Britain and back to a new job with the parent Paccar group, handing over to his understudy of the last three years, Rod Heather. There were no celebrations or introductions on the Foden stand, of course, because there wasn't a Foden stand. . All of which gave Rod time to spend part of his first week in the chair being a member of the public and having a quiet look at what everyone else was doing . .
• Every manufacturer and stand-holder tries to do something a little different during the show to attract people's attention. Freight Rover's gimmick this year was to have a caricaturist working full-time on the stand, recording for posterity his views of FR's guests.
"Trist" was employed to draw 30 caricatures a day, but by the second trade day he was doing over 50. The Hawk and one of his helpers were unsuspecting victims of Trist's perceptive eye and wickedlyaccurate pen, much to the amusement of those who were not.
• The award for quickest update goes to ERF.
When its new ES6 was wheeled onto the stand at the beginning of the week, it had a simple grille with the letters E Suffice to say that the results will serve as a constant reminder to all Hawks that there are others out there with an eagle eye (sorry about the mixed metaphor).
I wonder what Freight Rover will do to me if I should dare to criticise its latest model . . .
• The Hawk bumped into a chap from one of Britain's biggest and best-known truck manufacturers and admired the acres of stand space.
"Most impressive. Have you had many visitors?" he asked. "Good God, of course," said the manufacturer's man. "Spend a million quid on a setup like this and you've got to get them on the stand."
So that's how you measure your return on capital invested. I've always wanted to know.
• Overheard on a certain manufacturer's stand, a PR man was briefing executives about a visit of top, megaimportant, big-cheese director: "For those of you who don't know him, he's the one that's completely bald, with grey hair", he said.
Who was the mystery man? Better still — who was the PR man? The Hawk will reveal the identity of both to the first correspondent promising 2200 . . . unless he happens to hear from the PR man first.
R F spaced out across it. By opening day, there was a totally new grille, with a stylish ERF badge at its right-hand edge — and looking much the better for it.