Leyland Buffalo: What's the Story?

Fair enough too.

Oh, by the way, T has been to the Spanish parallel universe:



and:



and:



Actually, only one of those is a Leyland - the other two are rarer than a Buffalo, if you can imagine that (and no, they're not Mack NRs either). I'm sill trying to battle my way through Google-Spanish, but the two top pics are of TMUs. TMU was sort of a Spanish RFW and another one of the Mitegui companies, the initials standing for Tom

First posted on the Contractor thread by AtkiPete but it probably belongs here for completeness' sake, the Caulfield Buffalo from a few pages back. Pic by Hugh Schofield and is from before a Cummins 335 made its way under that bonnett.



Cheers,

T

I've read most of the comments with great interest.

We all know that with hind-sight things are very different.

We must remember that we are talking about the 50's & 60's (70's & 80's to a lesser degree) here. Have you ever looked are some old newsreels or pictures of your local cities of that era?

Swanston Street in Melbourne depicted 99% of men wearing hats and there were many Gladstone bags!

You need to include the politics and design limitations of that time.
Remember the road size, speed limits and loadings, the local council bye-laws and so forth.

Leyland Motors main market was the local UK bus and truck (Lorry) operators. That's where their profit came from!

Leyland were caught wanting when the UK decided towards the 'Common Market'.
Almost overnight new rules were introduced that allowed European trucks (used to Autobahn travel, with the appropriate speeds and axle loadings.) in the country lanes of England.

Then there was the Thatcher Years that saw the demise of many a UK manufacturing base, including BMC, mostly due to poor economics and union bashing.

Leyland were good at trucks and buses for the UK market, so the Thatcher Government got them to run the failing BMC (with government interference).
It was wrong to expand a good business for political reasons into an unknown and failing area of turmoil, as history has borne out.

In the times of Ship travel when it took weeks rather than hours to reach an overseas market, Leyland only entertained export if the order was big enough.
That's one reason it established partnerships in South Africa, India, South America, Spain, Israel and to a lesser degree, Australia.
The many differences in design and badging was a sort of 'Tagging' by those who invested their money in a joint venture with Leyland!
Notwithstanding design differences for local climate.

Just imagine how long it was for delivery by ship from placing an order!

Suffice to say, we can all have a shot at the 'Pommes' nowadays for what is history, but they did things then in the only way the knew how...then!

Tappets need adjusting. First BMC was thrust onto the leyland group in the early 70's, well before Thatcher came along. Secondly, Leyland Australia was a big deal, with Australian content driven by Aus govt import tariffs designed to support Australian maunufacturers. However, notwithstanding Leyland managers pissing a lot of people off through their arrogant style the Australian operation could have stood alone (like Atkinson did) if the parent company wasn't determined to pull the rug out from under it. A factor not usually recognised is that the import tariffs distorted buying patterns. For example, interstaters ran the lighter Comets and aec Mercurys rather than the more suitable Beavers, Hippos and Mammoths/Mandators because the tariffs blew the cost out of proportion to the benefit that should have been gained. It was mainly government contractors and other heavy duty operations that bought the bigger trucks. In the 50's the volume of exports was graeter than you indicate (can't put my finger on it now), the main problem was they could sell every truck they made so felt they didn't have to work too hard at investing in upgrades - a case in point was the AEC mklll six speed gearbox. The local importer was screaming for attention to constant failures to the overdrive (which lifted top speed from 30 to 40mph) but the factory ignored them. All the technology was there, they just didn't want to use it. Look at Volvo - they were turbo charging in the late 50's and the F86 in 1967 was just an upgrade of an older model, nothing sensational as far as the Swedes were concerned, although their government requirement for crash testing the cabs was well ahead of it's time.
In spite of all this I remain an admirer of the Leyland, AEC and Thornycroft etc trucks and have a collection/restoration queue to prove it!

Leyland was certainly a big and influential company here up to the late 70s. Aussie operators ran lighter spec trucks because of the cost and also the tare weight, ie a Comet could carry a bigger legal payload than a Super Hippo.
Atkinson either ignored what their Aussie operation was doing or accepted that things had to be done very differently in the colonies.

G'Day All,

Fascinating stuff - paricularly about how the local content (Mammoth, I assume that's what made the tarrifs higher) distorted the Aussi market. In Israel, the market was distorted because for the first 30 years of the state's existence we had Labour firmly at the helm and it practiced an almost (but not quite) Communist economy. There are a lot of unknowns left but the basic position was that the gov't decided who would get an importer's concession and who won't, not the market. Also, there were foreign currency restrictions so if you wanted to set up as an importer you needed the right contacts. In the early 1960s the gov't reached an agreement with Leyland to part-assemble its lorries and buses in the town of Ashdod, and part of this was that anything made by Leyland enjoyed a sale price advantage when compared with the fully imported competitors. So you had a similar situation where they could sell any lorry they could produce (and in fact, there were shortages) - I think at one time Israel was one of the largest markets for them, so they simply did not care about the highest end of the market, where Autocar and Mack had it all to themselves. That's why I think they did not bother with pushing the Bufallo in Israel... Later they woke up with the Contractor but that was not in the same class as the Mack DM800 (the market standard, I suppose) or the 335 Cummins (US made) engined Autocars. Of course, the rot started setting in during the 1970s quality wise and the gov't had enough and signed a contract with Mack to assemble Flintstones at the old Ashdod factory.

Shame really - the basic product was good but they just would not develop it . Same thing with their cars, but that is another can of worms...

Cheers,

T

PS: Edited to add I think as Pete pointed out the best way was to allow the locals to do their own thing like Atkinson. The Spanish TMU I posted about is possibly another good example - I have not been able to find out much about them but Leyland 900 coupled to Mack Quad box + local or Mack axles would not surprise me (TMU was probably too small to have the same success as Atkinson in Oz and of course had no factory connections).

rough example of how import tarriffs operated;
fully imported truck $1,000 + 25% tariff = 1,250
truck assembled in Australia with 25% local content by value = $1,150

Heavy duty truck (low volume so not assembled in Aus)
$1,500 + tarriff = $1,875
This is why Bedfords had Holden cabs, Inters has Aussie cabs etc etc. The system did get Aussie manufacturing on it's feet

Mammoth,

Makes sense now - I think what they had in Israel was that custom duty for an assembled truck was calculated as parts, not a complete vehicle (a big difference).

Your system must have helped to start production in Oz and, Unless I am greatly mistaken, nowadays most heavy duty trucks sold in Australia are 70-90% locally designed and made - I don't think simply importing foreign stuff would work, for example a US made W900 would fall apart under Aussie conditions... Israel is too small to justify local production on economic grounds (possibly on security/political grounds, but that's another story) and roads now are not as bad as they were in the early years, so imported models are strong enough.

Cheers,

T

Researching about the Leyland Buffalo,I came across this thread,and the photo of the sad looking New Zealand Buffalo.I thought I might add what little I know.

In the mid '60's my father was working as a mechanic for Dales Freightways in Auckland,and they had a Buffalo.It was his favorite truck,and maybe the reason he went to work there...if it was big and interesting,he wanted to work on it.I was in the workshop one day when he had the gearbox out,the top cover was off and he was flicking it through the gears with a screwdriver to show me how it worked...I was about 10 at the time,so it made no sense to me,but lost count of the gears,so there must be more than 4 eh? The Buffalo was used on the biggest haulage jobs,some so long they used a jinker under the rear,a driver sat in it,braking and steering.

The fact that it was a tractor unit makes me think the rusty old wreck might be the Dales Freightways Buffalo,rather than the Cummins powered one which has a flat deck.My father might not like to see it in that state,but would be pleased to see it was in Kaitaia,as he was from the next town north,Awanui.

In the early '80's I was working in Glen Eden,across the road from a guy who was running an old International salvage truck,with a huge boom and powerful winch.One day he hauled in what I thought was a Buffalo,and I went racing over to check it out.But it was a Super Beaver I think.We talked about the Buffalo,and he knew of the Dales Freightways Buff,but didn't think highly of it...not what I wanted to hear about the iconic super truck of my childhood.The Super Beaver was going to a collector,so I hope there is a nicely restored Super Beaver in New Zealand somewhere.

Motu,G'Day mate.Welcome to the forum eh?
The rusty wreck is definately McRobbie's from Pokeno.
There were 4 Buffs in NZ.The first two had locally built cabs(by Hawkes,I think)
They went to Dales and Willy Stevenson.
Dales' Buff served a long and productive life with them then went to the South Is where it
was extensively rebuilt and its appearance changed.
I'm told it was cut up about 15 years ago.
Stevenson's also served them faithfully for many years then went to Rasmussen at Waihi.
I believe it is now in a derelict state somewhere around Waiuku.
The second two had Leyland steel cabs.
McBreens,Whangarei got one.This one was preserved by its original driver,Peter
McDonald (PeterMac) and sold to Caulfields shortly before he passed away.
The Rusty Wreck has the remains of a steel cab and McRobbie's is the only one not accounted for.
Possibly still in Neil Shayler's yard,Whangarei (where the photo was taken) or it may have been moved to Neil Otway's premises at Papakura?

I'd really like to know what happened to the Super Beaver.I only know of two in NZ.
Again McRobbies had one and Bill Sharp at Kawakawa had the other.Both early model
trucks,guess mid 50s.

R/