Maxidyne

Also used in the Postal Jeep's successor, the LLV. until it was replaced by the 2.2.

Quite correct... Daimler, Renault, and Volvo invested in American truck makers when American businessmen wouldn't.

Other than Ford and GM, back then Mack was the only big truck maker with a full scale wind tunnel. That's why Macks didn't have some of the weird buffeting other brands did and Macks got the best MPG.

IIRC Volvo bought White out of bankruptcy, and would have been nice if the bankruptcy court would have preferred an American based owner. That said, there may have been no American based offers that were competitive. Mack was a very successful enterprise when Renault bought it, and Renault treated Mack as an equal and took advantage of the synergies the acquisition offered. Volvo had a different attitude, seems they view Mack as a competitor to be sabotaged.

Wouldn't surprise me- GM and Deere were quite close in the 80s with Deere involved in the manufacture of the 4 cylinder "Iron Duke" engine for GM. Deere also built trucks for a while, a stripped chassis that was the foundation for step vans for Continental Baking and motorhomes.

The long hood already exists, in either CL or Titan shapes. All that's required is the initiative to build it, but given that it would compete with the Volvo VNX with the Cummins X15, I doubt we'll see it. And the last thing we'll see in a Mack is a Scania engine, more likely we'll see Scania engines in the next generation Internationals.

Rob, I saw some bids for full size work trucks for the state of Oregon recently, and the bids were just under $20k for 2WD and around $24k for 4WD. fjh, in America the Raptor package is only offered on the F150.

Trade the hood and big sleeper for more cargo space and you'd gain around 20% in productivity... But the steering wheel holders seem to prefer the false security of that long hood and life in an upholstered tin can.

Probably had an overdrive transmission.

Some of the best music I've ever heard was produced by a V8 Superliner pulling a loaded to 70 tons 17 axle doubles train in South Dakota a few years back. Last time I saw a Mack or even a Volvo pulling one of those 17 axle trains... Says something of what Volvo has done to Mack.

Looks like a couple trucks coming together- Couple cabs there plus frames and a front axle.

That's part of why Honda is a class act, though while they're celebrating their history I hope they'll fess up to stealing Vetter's fairing design. But if Ford ever used a Honda there'd be no mention of it, and GM would just put a Chevy badge on it and rewrite the history to suit.

That kind of money should buy a flexible engine line that can build V8s too...

The real issue is that the plant is running at nowhere near full capacity and still injuring too many workers. Demand for the Passat has cratered and was never enough to keep the line busy on even one shift. Then VW made a billion dollar expansion to build their 3 row SUV, which isn't selling that well either- If they ran at Detroit's car a minute line rates they could fill the whole demand with one line working one shift. And now VW's planning another billion dollar expansion to build electric cars that won't sell either? It gets worse- The NA Passat has become an oddball on the old Passat platform that shares little with the Euro Passat, and the SUV has a Skoda version but that's probably not a high volume product either. Then there's the worker's comp liability- besides the millions in long term claims, every worker lost from the workplace in today's tight labor market is a loss for both VW and the Chattanooga area. With worker recruitment and retention becoming a major part of corporate strategy, this trend does not bode well for VW.

Looks all ready for a remake of "Road Warrior"

HG, sounds like they geared your truck for the usual 80,000 pound federal weight limit, no wonder it's a dog at Montana's much higher weight limits.

During the winter I see a lot of Beelman trucks on US61 north of St.Louis, they own a barge terminal around St.Louis and I suspect when the river closes for the winter they do a lot of business.

I suspect the heaviest tandem rears available on an Anthem would be 44k or 46k, anything heavier you'd probably have to go to a Granite.

I suspect you have to move beyond the dealer and cultivate some factory contacts to get what you want. Joel's company buys a lot of new trucks so they have some bargaining power, and Jamie only has a handful of trucks but he lucked out and found a sympathetic soul at the Mack display at a truck show who took his request seriously. Jamie may have been able to coattail on the development work for Joel's Anthem, IIRC both their trucks were built on the same day. Jamie is contracted to a big fleet that buys a lot of new trucks and Mack may have wanted to expose them to the Anthem's incredible efficiency potential.

A lot of the problem seems to be that Mack and the dealers aren't promoting these high MPG specs- Dealers have actually told customers wanting to buy a truck like Joel's or Jamie's that they're not available!

There's an interesting group on Facebook by a couple drivers running some very trick new Mack Anthems specced for maximum fuel economy, they're averaging over 9 MPG and pushing 10. Here's the link.

Damn... FCA and Renault deserved each other. As for puffing up "sales" figures, FCA is still at it- I just read that last quarter they "sold" several hundred pickups into dealer lease fleets to prop up their sales numbers and beat Chevy.

They're too stubborn to admit defeat- They'd rather leave behind a wreck than sell to someone who would make a success of Mack, and can the Volvo brand even be saved here?

Used to run parts for a Mercury dealer in one like that, 'cept it had the 8 foot long wide bed.

From what I read decades ago the cab of an RD has extra reinforcements. Otherwise an RD would sometimes be built with much the same specs as an R, so it's hard to tell an RD from an R until the RD got a different hood.