Mack Magnums in Australia

[hilifta]

Hi there,

I have a question which hope someone out there can answer.
Some years ago Renault and Mack developed the Magnum to operate in Australia.
I saw the odd one in Australia, but to this day I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number that I have seen there.

What happened, why did they fail.

Rgds/Mike (hilifta)

[Western SMT]

History and who owns what

http://tripatlas.com/Renault_Trucks#History

Mack Magnum

[G-CPTN]

http://rides.webshots.com/photo/1508...64058830POYmbt

The Mack Magnum was a class 8 truck manufactured by Mack Trucks Australia, a division of Mack Trucks. It consisted of a Renault Magnum cab on a Mack made chassis. It was powered by a Cummins ISX, had a Roadranger 18 speed transmission and Rockwell or Dana drive axles. It was replaced by the Mack Quantum.

[huppypuppy]

G-CPTN,

The Mack Magnum had Signature power only, ranging from 565hp to 580hp in later versions!

Joe

[G-CPTN]

With the growth in long combination units (B-Double) in OZ and the demise of the US-sourced Mack Ultraliner, we (Mack Trucks Australia that is) were looking, in the late 90's, for a high performance COE to fit the bill."
"The Magnum was at that time being fitted with the Mack E9 V8 in Europe so it seems this would be the perfect solution---a popular US engine and a great riding Euro COE. However, tighter engine emissions then saw the end of the Mack V8 engine. Very fortunately, the introduction of the Cummins 15-litre Signature then occurred."
"So our very entrepreneurial Engineering team rose to the challenge and installed this big banger in the Magnum - up to 580hp and 2050lbft - just had to be good!!
"I would love to say that this marvellous bit of engineering had a happy ending but alas, customers didn't warm to the Magnum cab. So after producing just over 100, we decided to focussed on developing the Premium Route AKA the 'Qantum'."

From:- http://www.roadtransport.com/blogs/b...cks-cabov.html

[hilifta]

Thanks for that link GC.

No wonder you don't see too many Mack maggies in Oz if they only made just over 100.
I had no idea the number was so low.
Hard to believe that a truck that is so successful in Europe could be such a failure in Oz.
But as a guy said to me at Bathurst last year, you had to be a bit "gay" to like/drive a maggie.

[robertdavey6]

Originally Posted by hilifta

Thanks for that link GC.

No wonder you don't see too many Mack maggies in Oz if they only made just over 100.
I had no idea the number was so low.
Hard to believe that a truck that is so successful in Europe could be such a failure in Oz.
But as a guy said to me at Bathurst last year, you had to be a bit "gay" to like/drive a maggie.

They might also have been a bit "soft", too. I've only driven one once, but, I found the ride very disconcerting (to say the least). There was an awful lot of cab roll, in the corners, The gearchange was heavy. That was probably a comparative thing as, I was driving a Seddon Atkinson Strato, with the Eaton Twin-Splitter gearbox and the Magnum had a ZF(?) 16speed syncromesh 'box.
Overall, I was only impressed by the power of it. However, it did have a 440Hp engine, compared to the 320 in mine.