Air-cooled engine for Magirus 'club' truck
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• The Magirus-Deutz version of the "Club of Four" middle-weight truck will be fitted with the company's 912-series air-cooled in-line engine, it was revealed last week. Construction of the new models is due to begin in the autumn of 1974 and it is planned to construct 500 of these vehicles by the end of next year, as a pre-production batch and for demonstration purposes.
This news was given at the official opening of the new Magirus-Deutz assembly plant at Donautal, West Germany --the second phase in a rebuilding project which began in 1968 and will leave the older works in Ulm to be modernized and used for producing fire-fighting units and components.
Total capacity of the Donautal plant is 20,000 units a year Magirus expects to exceed 14,000 chassis in 1974, compared with a total of 11,750 this year.
Here to stay
In an unequivocal statement to the 300 guests at the official opening, Dr Sonne, chairman of Klockner-Humboldt-Deutz, made it clear that the concern's commercial vehicles activities were here to stay. He rejected repeated suggestions that the viability of the truck manufacturing side would depend on co-operation agreements with other (European) makers, and alluded to US practice where more than a dozen truck manufacturers of varying size and importance remained in healthy competition.
The new facilities have absorbed £11.6m out of an investment of some £34m on a new vehicle range introduced two years ago, an engine plant and modernization of production factories.
Orders resulting from the Frankfurt Show included many new customers, said Dr Sonne, and the marque's dependence on the construction sector had been reduced from 70 to 50 per cent.