ROAD TESTS WORST VEHICLES CM remembers those terrible trucks Stuff

29th August 2013, Page 25

29th August 2013

Page 25

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Page 25, 29th August 2013 — ROAD TESTS WORST VEHICLES CM remembers those terrible trucks Stuff

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of mares We asked former and present CM road testers to recall the worst vehicle they had the misfortune to drive Tata Loadbeta Toby Clark (CM 1992 to 2003) Well, there was the Citroen 025 that sounded like a nailgun attacking a galvanised dustbin.., or the shatteringly noisy ERF refuse truck... but overall, there's Well, there was the Citroen 025 that sounded like a nailgun attacking a galvanised dustbin.., or the shatteringly noisy ERF refuse truck... but overall, there's only one contender for me: the Tata Loadbeta

pickup of 1995.

Tata is known now as the owner of Jaguar and Land Rover — but its first foray into the UK market wasn't quite as classy. The Tata looked smart and solid enough at first (the advertising even played on the Mercedes-lookalike grille by saying "the inspiration is obvious"), but things went downhill rapidly. For a start, the cab didn't have the typical new car smell: instead, there was a dusty waft of cardamom, cumin and coriander — almost the full garam masala — and the sharp tang of cheap plastic. Impressively, Tata built almost every part

itself — right down to the fuses — but the finished product was pretty inconsistent. We tested two Loadbetas: one would barely make it to 70mph, and even the faster one took more than 30 seconds to get to 50mph fully laden.

Then there were the warped, fairground-style mirrors. And the blank switches on the dashboard, not connected to anything. And the windscreen wipers that conked out on a rainy evening on the M25, thanks to a blown (Tata-made) fuse.

But the piOce de resistance was the handling. The Indianmade Dunlop tyres had tall, floppy sidewalls, so hard cornering proceeded in lurches and slides. We didn't realise quite how close the tyres were to coming off the rims until we saw the photos. Scania LNG Colin Barnett (CM 1998 to 2011)

With hindsight, it's clear that the road to environmental Nirvana is packed with confused travellers staggering out of technological cul-de-sacs, each one having promised the Holy Grail of greenness. We have to admit to having been suckered by statistics on a few occasions, when the promise failed to deliver, sometimes literally. We could have chosen a number of projects to fill this slot, but one of the most memorable was Scania's 2001 project to convert some old Euro-1 3-series 4x2 tractors to run on either LNG or CNG. The Safeway supermarket chain bought heavily into the project, with considerable investment into

in-depot refuelling facilities. The engineer in me winced a bit at the discovery that the compression ratio was to be reduced by removing about 50cc of metal from each piston in situ, but hey, these guys are experts.

In fact, the trucks didn't go too badly, not least because the "re-engineering", as we had to call it, gave the 320hp engines a 10% boost in output. However, the green bubble eventually burst, and the trucks were removed from service amid claims of engine failure, overheating and removal of engine brakes, with the unions getting involved in drivers' refusal to drive them.

In my defence, I had only been in this business a couple of years, and obviously hadn't developed the healthy cynicism needed. If I had, I might just have queried whether the project was in any way inspired by the fact that Scania was able to lay its hands on 200 obsolete, 500,000km 4x2 tractors. Lada Riva Brian Weatherley (CM 1978 to 2009)

In 1986 we opened our report on the Lada Riva 370 with "It's not every day CM road tests a Russian van". After its week-long stay with us, during which it required attention from local dealers five times to sort out various problems with its 1.3-litre engine, we were left with the impression that it wasn't the most sophisticated van on the market.

Then there were the rust spots around its Aand B-posts (which we described as "... rather premature for only a C-registration vehicle"), while its unprogressive brakes could be "an unpleasant surprise" to the unwary.

Yet we were strangely attracted to the Riva's alternative layout, the vehicle being a van based on an estate car, but with its rear passenger doors retained and the option of a folding rear seat. Conceptually, as an early MPV, it could be argued that it was ahead of its time. If only we could have said the same for the van itself.

Still, some time after our test, a reader from Macclesfield wrote to say he had bought a five-door Lada Riva estate, "and, do you know, I can't, for the price of £5,350 on the road, find any fault with this vehicle".

Clearly, somebody loved the Lada. Nissan Ebro Bryan Jarvis (CM 1982 to 1999)

I started road testing in the early 1980s when we had a dominant CV industry. We had our fair share of eccentricities too, such as the novel but highly dangerous Sinclair C5 midget trike, which we tested around Nuneaton. Another was the Dennis Delta 16-tonner whose Gardner 6LXB diesel had a propensity for running backwards when about to stall.

But my 'worst-ever' award went to the Barcelona rust bucket — the Nissan Ebro 7-tonne integral van. On form it looked impressive: a large interior, a 4-tonne payload and at £10,000 for the chassis-cab, it seemed a real bargain.

However, I soon discovered its many Achilles' heels. The 'smokey joe' Spanish-built Perkins T4.236 diesel was an old design warranted only by Motor lberica — not Perkins UK, and its maladjusted fuelinjection pump over-fuelled.

Its clutch was heavy, it had a Turner five-speed box with two poorly spaced top cogs, a finicky twist and push park brake lever, and highly vulnerable powersteering hydraulic pipes located close to the clutch pedal. But top of my whinge list was the large areas of under-body rust staring at me when I shimmied underneath the van. When approached, Ebro said we'd tested But top of my whinge list was the large areas of under-body rust staring at me when I shimmied underneath the van. When approached, Ebro said we'd tested

the last of a small "recall batch" and the factory's under-body protection process "was now cured".

Well — it'd been caught out, so it would say that, wouldn't it? Vauxhall Midi John Kendall (CM 1990 to 1997)

The phone call told me all I needed to know about the effect of my Vauxhall Midi road test. The demanding schedule of a weekly magazine meant that road test copy was generated several weeks in advance of publication. The test schedule meant that by the time it appeared in print, the tech team had already generated one or two more tests. I was chasing up a news story that morning on the plunging nature of Vauxhall's van sales and had forgotten the Midi test by the time I picked up the phone to speak to Vauxhall's normally mildmannered PR man Arthur Fairley. "What was behind those plunging sales figures?" was the gist of my questioning. I was told in no uncertain terms that road tests like mine were, if not the cause, not the way to revive market fortunes.

What was wrong with the Midi? Just about everything, apart from the size of the load space relative to its compact dimensions. It started with the driver's door. As I opened the Midi's cab door to take it to the car park, a gust of wind blew, caught it and flung it open, bending the A-pillar behind the hinge plate in the process — a bad start.

Then there was the awkward access to the cab, the noise, the driving position, not to mention the driving experience itself. No driver in their right mind would want to spend their days in one when there was a Transit, or just about any other rival, available. And the van's predecessor, the widely respected Bedford CF (the Isuzuderived Midi began life wearing Bedford badges) was better in most respects. The Midi was the wrong van at the wrong time. It took its successor but one, the Vivaro, which was built in the same plant, to revive Vauxhall's fortunes.

Guy's Big J8 was well built and reliable, but it was no fun to drive. The steering was low geared and vague in the dead ahead position, yet heavy approaching full lock — plus it needed 6.5 turns from lock to lock and had a swept turning circle of 26.7m.

Its performance was downright embarrassing. Going from rest to 40mph took lmin 20sec, and it took a mile to reach 43mph! Top speed with the fastest axle was 52mph and although bottom gear was low enough to climb a one-in-six hill, it was not low enough to achieve a hill start.

An optional slower axle could cope with a one-in-six hill start, but that reduced the top speed to 42mph.

Add in its sloppy steering and the heavy, awkward treadle-type accelerator pedal that made your right leg ache big time, and the Big J8 was a pain to drive. Dacia Shifter Andrew English (CM 1985 to 1989)

Worst road test vehicle? No question. Cast your minds back to the summer of 1987, when Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up blasted from car radio-cassettes, the Queen opened the Docklands Light Railway and Margaret Thatcher and president Mitterand signed an undertaking to build the Channel Tunnel.

Everything was looking optimistically forward except down in the road test car park at Commercial Motor, where an old Cold War warrior, loaded with a tonne of test gravel, was skulking. As the junior road tester I got to test the Dacia Shifter. I wished I hadn't. At that time, the state-owned Romanian car maker was starved of funds and its model range was based on 101 uses for a dead Renault 12, almost a decade out of production with the French manufacturer. The pickup and drop-side did moderate business for Dacia in the Eastern bloc, but there wasn't much At that time, the state-owned Romanian car maker was starved of funds and its model range was based on 101 uses for a dead Renault 12, almost a decade out of production with the French manufacturer. The pickup and drop-side did moderate business for Dacia in the Eastern bloc, but there wasn't much

competition. Our test Shifter was presented in pretty ropey condition, rusty, with a slipping clutch and maladjusted ignition timing that gave poor starting.

The dashboard appeared to have been fitted out by a bloke with a hammer and a screwdriver to make the holes.

On the test track it terrified everyone with its awesomely wayward handling. The tailboard wouldn't fasten and it broke down twice and had to be taken back for repairs by the importer. On the second occasion I abandoned it outside a Nuneaton newsagent and left the keys with the shop's proprietort won't lock:' I said. He peered over his half moons at the steaming wreck outside. "And who would steal that?' he asked.

It was cheap, but the road test's title — Far from perfect — sums up the dreadful Shifter. I suggested it was just the thing to break down outside Count Dracula's Transylvanian castle in Romania — it was a horror show. Since then I've had cars disintegrate under me, cars with engines falling out, cars that caught fire at top speed, cars that weren't the same shape after an acceleration run, but nothing, absolutely nothing, was as bad as that terrible Dacia.

Although I have carried out many road tests for CM, my worst experience occurred while testing for Truck magazine. The vehicle involved was a Volvo FL eightwheeler and unfortunately (I'm red-faced recalling this 18 years on!) it was all down to driver error. In my early days of testing in the 1990s on Truck magazine, we used to run an annual tipper truck test in March, called Tip-in. We gathered the trucks in a quarry for a punishing off-road extreme test of performance. I'd always liked the FL as a tipper — good driving position, nice handling, swift gear change and decent payload — and we'd been getting on well as we barrelled our way around the old Lafarge site at Mountsorrel, Leicestershire. The haul

road from the bowels of the quarry was a gruelling climb of a mile and a half of steep gradients, touching one-in-six at times, and as we were measuring the speed of ascent, gearchanges were of the essence. That, dear reader, is where the problems occurred.

For some reason, still difficult to understand, I managed to drop down about six gears in one change. An early life working on farms ensured my meaty forearms forced the stick from sixth to second, the engine screamed, the rev counter went off the clock and there was an almighty graunch of mangled metal as the diff flew to bits.

Once recovered, the truck spent the next few months in the workshop as Volvo engineers tried to bring the old girl back to life, without success.

They never did get the truck to work again and it had to be written off, I believe. I think Volvo did eventually forgive me, although I still break out in a cold sweat every time I see a white-cabbed FL eight-wheeler. Leyland Octopus Steve Gray (CM 1974 to 1982)

By the late 1970s, Leyland's range was well past its sell-by date. While new kids on the block, notably Volvo and Scania, offered tilt cabs, powerful motors and synchromesh boxes, Leyland soldiered on with trucks originally designed in the early 1960s.

The company thought one of its venerable eight-leggers could be a viable alternative to an artic for long haul, so we took a flat-bed Octopus around our route in Scotland. The truck's ancient origins soon showed. The Ergomatic cab tilted, but left behind the cab floor, engine cover, instruments and steering column. The sealing between floor and cab let in drafts and fumes even on our demonstrator, and the offset engine hump meant the mate's seat was just about wide enough for a 10-year-old. The engine lacked power and fuel consumption on the test was no better than an artic, which offered a couple of tons extra payload. At low revs, the power steering assistance all but disappeared.

Worst of all, the brakes were next to useless. On our test, the ups and downs of the A68 took their toll and when we came down into Corbridge they had faded completely. In front of us was the town's medieval bridge, complete with traffic lights set at red. By sheer good luck, just as we approached they changed to green and we sailed across "brakeless" until we were slowed and eventually halted by the gradient on the other side.

and bad) in the past two years, my award for worst road test goes to an Iveco Daily that I drove while I was technical editor on sister title Motor Transport.

It was 2003 and I was driving a third-generation 3.5-tonne Daily in southern Spain. It was the latest 146hp variant, and it performed impressively. So much so that I found it hard to believe the Italian demo driver in the passenger seat when he told me we were carrying a tonne of sand in the rear. Anyway, so good was its performance that I managed to sail through a police speed check doing 20km/h more than I should have been.

Blue lights appeared in my rearview mirror and I was pulled over by two particularly grumpy policemen. Although my command of the Spanish language consists of little more than "dos cerveza por favor", I eventually managed to deduce that they wanted to know what was in the back. I tried explaining that it was just back. I tried explaining that it was just

sand, but they couldn't understand any English, and gestured that they wanted to see it. No problem I thought, jumping out of the van, glancing at their guns while they walked me to the rear of the vehicle. Things went from bad to worse when I then discovered that the rear doors were jammed. Try as I might, I couldn't get the damn things open. Now they were getting seriously suspicious, and started shouting and pointing to the side door.

It opened OK, but I couldn't believe what I saw before me. Yes there was a tonne of sand, but it was wrapped up in little white packages! For a while they thought they'd just uncovered a huge cocaine smuggling operation, and it was only after splitting open one of the bags that they realised they weren't going to get massive promotions. That little incident cost me €50 for a speeding ticket and £4.50 for a new pair of boxer shorts!