Scania Longline…the greatest truck that never made it BIG. The Boss and Biglorryblog have a chunter over Scania’s finest.

From the sublime…..

To the electric…? That old curmudgeon ‘the Boss’ is back on Biglorryblog having successfully wound up most of the Steel Boys (Don’t worry guys you should see what he says to me! And regularly too….) Anyroadup he’s up to make amends with this offering and says: “Brian, seems I perhaps ruffled a few feathers in the world of Commercial Classics—never mind no offence meant. I do, however, remain baffled by, in some cases, the obsession. My buddy has 27 classic cars, 50’s and 60’s stuff from the Bubble Car, XK120, Jensens galore,a Stag, a Tiger or two, several Yank tanks and many others—barely two of them would get you to the end of the street! But I digress. Europe’s vehicle manufacturers have almost been committing Hari Kari recently but each week I pass the factory that builds the Mega and it’s car equivalent, looking over the fence it seems to be a hive of industrial activity.This particular electric Mega scoots around the port of Caen, max speed 50km/h,limit 150-200km’s and 3 hours to charge.I think it’s great and I am trying to convince Mrs Boss.she needs one for her little business.”

And in a quick message on his budding photographic skills he says: “Tom Cunningham, I laid on the ground ‘without’ a pallet for this shot,how sad!” Meanwhile, click through here for more on the fabulous Scania Longline and an answer to The Boss’s question as to why it ultiemately fell by the wayside..

“Once again a Longline [or as it was originally called the eXc-BLB] ,no excuses, I snapped three last week. One I cannot put on the Blog, it belongs to a certain anti-hero who might at some time in the near future require all the longer lorry pics I have taken in Europe….to prove a point! Secondly,these are better than what I offered before. Thirdly,Brian said a while ago that Scania built the Longline expecting length limits to increase,well, why didn’t they and who put the kibosh on it?”

‘.

Well if I can remember it correctly it all started back in 2002 when ‘eXc’ was launched at the IAA Show at Hannover. At that time Scania called for a ‘debate’ on vehicle lengths hoping to persuade the Brussels Bureaucrats that they should allow longer artics. Fast forward to 2003 and the ‘eXc’ has become ‘The Longline’ (still based on the old 4-Series) and officially unveiled (above) in its new guise to the world’s press at the RAI Show in Amsterdam. And Scania was still trying to get Brussels to relax length limits….Come 2004 and the arrival of the new R-range clearly it hadn’t had any luck and it was decided not to build a Longline on the new R-range…although some HAVE been built, I think by Beers in Holland or Svempe in Sweden.

A great pity. Anyway the Boss quite rightly identifies the European bureaucrats as the bloody thrombosis (OK a bunch of clots) who ultimately killed Longline off by refusing to extend EU length laws. “Too busy filling out expense forms?” he suggests…”It was no great deal extending a cab” he adds, “And it only leaves the larger operators seemingly now desperate for longer trailers, putting more good men out of a job. And I do sympathise with our double-manning East European colleagues and others,in some instances living for weeks on end in something not much larger than a day cab–yes I am all heart. Anybody else with an opinion???? The Boss.” And as for having a heart, I never doubted it for a minute.

Could the Longline make a comeback? Like the XXL it’s going to need some changes in Brussels. What do you think?