(^62) August 2019 Truck & Driver
SCANIA V8 CALENDAR TRUCKS
I
t was a big year for art.
Despite 1973 being the year
in which Pablo Picasso
painted his last (he died that
April), latterday masters
such as David Hockney and
Andy Warhol were leading a
revolution, taking the visual arts
in new directions and to new
audiences around the globe.
In the music world, the
changes were being rung too,
with the emergence of bands
such as Aerosmith, while a
declining Elvis was slowly but
surely preparing to leave the
building – sadly, the King would
pass away just four years later,
leaving upstarts like Aerosmith to
carry on popular music’s legacy
to the next generation. As the
great Neil Young put it in his
song, Hey Hey, My My: ‘Rock ’n’
roll can never die... The King is
gone but he’s not forgotten’.
Auto artistry
Across the other side of the world
in 1973, automotive works of art
of an altogether different nature
were being produced in Sweden,
about 20 miles south west of
Stockholm to be precise. While
we can’t claim too many UK
masterpieces-on-wheels at that
time ourselves (in ’73 British
Leyland was busy launching the
Austin Allegro, the car which its
tormented owners would soon
come to call the Allagro), in the
small town of Södertälje, Scania’s
engineering artists were engaged
on producing something of an
extremely special nature – the
legendary LB140.
Root-and-branch restoration was done by Dutch craftsman Leo Bol
The Scania team had actually
been perfecting the design for
four years by the time Kevin
Mackin’s truck was built, because
the LB140 – the first Scania
vehicle to carry the V8 badge
- had been in production since
- But Scania has long had a
policy of continuous
improvement, and so a number
of developmental tweaks had
been applied by the time Kevin’s
truck rolled off the line.
However, as the man himself
tells us, his LB140 still sported all
the hallmarks of the first-
generation Scania V8.
“The early 140s had the
oblong headlamps in the bumper
and a red interior – so when I
saw this one, I knew it was the
one for me,” he says.
Kevin’s passion for Scania
began before he actually owned
one himself. Based in Banbridge,
County Down, Northern Ireland,
he’s a second-generation
member of a transport-operating
family. “I used go out with my
brothers, who always had
Scania,” he recalls. “When they
moved up to the V8, you could
feel the difference; they were a
real pleasure to drive.”
The Mackin family’s shift to
V8 was a phenomena being
replicated throughout Northern
Ireland during the 1970s (and is
something that continues to the
present day – big Scania vees
remain the vehicle of choice of
many of the province’s operators).
Scania had been developing
its V8 engine since the ’60s in
response to demands for extra
power, notably from international
long-haul operators, and its
introduction immediately caught
the eye of Ireland’s hauliers, both
north and south of the border.
This was not only because
many of them were international
long-haul operators too, but also
because the up-and-down and
twisty nature of Ireland’s highways
and byways made extra power
essential if journey times were to
be kept to a minimum.Big power boost
To put it into perspective, on the
launch of the LB140 it delivered
350 horsepower and 1245Nm of
torque. Compare that to the 260hp
of Scania’s next most powerful
engine, an 11-litre straight-six,
and the advantage is obvious –
an instant 35% power boost!
As part of an even broader
picture, moving up in power was
fast becoming a necessity for any
operator wishing to compete in
the European haulage
marketplace. That’s because
advances in road development
were permitting higher gross and
axle weights than ever before.
This in turn led to a chorus of
voices (not just from operators
but from the authorities and
travelling public too) calling for
the luggers of yesteryear to be
superseded by more powerful
vehicles capable of keeping up
with the traffic flow of the day.
Among those voices was
West Germany, which declared
an intention to insist on a
minimum rating of eight
horsepower per tonne to