VoLVo F88/89
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Any must-drive Top 10 has to include the F88, the truck that put Volvo on the map across the length and breadth of Europe and beyond. Yet the F88’s forerunner, called the Titan TipTop, was originally aimed at the US market, which might explain why it looked so like a classic Yankee COE in the first place. Launched in Europe in 1964 with the 240hp TD100A 9.6-litre turbo engine and all-synchromesh gearbox, it eventually arrived in the UK in right-hand-drive form in 1969.
The F88 certainly looked like a long-distance truck, with a decent sleeper cab to match, and when a number of European countries demanded at least 8hp per laden tonne, the F89 followed in 1970 with a 330hp 12-litre six-pot, although it never made it across the channel as a right-hooker. Instead, in 1972 Volvo uprated the F88’s 9.6-litre lump to 290hp for the Brits. The F88 remains the iconic artic for hundreds of those trail-blazing Middle East
pioneers who drove one to Saudi – and back again. (BW)