While this year sees Scania celebrating the 50th anniversary of the V8, the uncompromising powerplant which has captured the imagination of truckers the world over, the roots of this legendary engine date much further back, to the year 1902, although – at that time – any thoughts of a V8 were far into the future.
Just two years old at the time, the Malmöbased firm was competing with its somewhat older domestic rival, Vabis, for a share of �weden�s �edging automoti�e market� �tarting with bicycles, �cania had di�ersified into powered vehicles and in 1902 it launched one of �weden�s first two trucks� Vabis, with which Scania would merge in 1911, built the other in the same year.
�hose first trucks were 1�5�tonners, powered by twin-cylinder 12 hp units capable of delivering just about enough grunt to hit the claimed 12 kph top speed, on a good day with
�he first �cania V8 truck was deli�ered to �enrik �lssons �keri, a haulage firm in �ds�alla, �weden, for use in forestry work� �enrik �lsson, now 72 years old, remembers �ery well his introduction to the Scania V8 engine.‘ When we found out about this new engine, with 90 more horses than anything else we had, I decided on the spot to buy one,’ he says.‘ In our forests there was a great need for extra power. After bodywork, the truck, an LBT140, began operating on two shifts. Soon it was joined by another LBT140.’
It was a learning experience. Olsson remembers especially how calmly the clutch needed to be handled.‘ It grabbed hold immediately, so it wasn’ t entirely easy to make a smooth start,’ he recalls.‘ The engine was a bit too powerful for the driveshaft, and on a couple of occasions we needed emergency care at the Lecab Scania workshop in Karlstad, but we stuck with Scania; not only was it a good truck, but the service was also outstanding. We always got help when we needed it.’
a following wind. What would they have given for a powerful V8 back then?
Of course, nobody at Scania had ever heard of a V8 engine, let alone seen one, because it had only just been invented, in France, by a gentleman named Léon Levavasseur. In 1902 he filed a patent for a gasoline�powered V8 which he rather sycophantically named Antoinette, after the daughter of his financial backer�
Levavasseur had originally conceived his V8 engine for use in aircraft and speedboats, but by the 1950s it had become the weapon of choice for many automotive manufacturers, most notably in the States where huge amounts of power and torque were presumably needed to haul all those huge shed-loads of chrome around.
For Scania, the introduction of a V8 option to its rapidly expanding range of trucks was still a decade away. The decision to develop... P
ABOVE: Driver Pär Sundling( left) and owner Henrik Olsson pose in front of the new V8-powered‘ wonder truck’.
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