Registry of Ex Military Land Rovers
Other Vehicles => Miscellaneous Vehicles => Topic started by: Muzungu on August 02, 2016, 05:03:25 PM
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Can anybody provide information regarding the identity of this vehicle.
A friends father, now deceased, was in the Australian Army (Artillery) and had these photos among his documents.
She has been wondering what the vehicle is and I said I would try to find out for her.
Any information will be greatly appreciated.
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Bit of info here http://remlr.com/forum/index.php?topic=3336.0
Also more in here somewhere but can't find it, I know Tommy was restoring one
cheers
Scott
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One ton forward control prototype - covered in the remlr.com international pages
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This is the Ford vehicle, not International.
http://www.remlr.com/Army-Inter/images/xf4g.jpg
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Read more here.
http://www.remlr.com/Army-Inter/xf4.html
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Hi Boys ,
I haven't read the info on REMLR but I do remember being told many years ago when the School of Transport had its own museum that the international and the ford were proto types delivered to army to compete in the replacement trial to replace the Series 2A .
Half way thru the trial it was discovered that neither vehicle meet requirements and the trial was shelved due to cost. The army for the first time purchased as GS VEHICLE "off the shelve " the Series 3 Land Rover .
Happy to be corrected. It was a long time ago .
Cheers ,
Mick
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Thank you everyone for your replies and information.
Very much appreciated.
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The vehicle is an XF4, and the place the images were taken was at the Trial & Proving Wing at Monegeeta (sp?) north west of Melbourne.
An example of each of the Ford and International, as well as the ADE mockup, are held by the Army Museum Bandiana, Victoria.
Mike
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Very close Mike, it's Monegeetta.
I live about 2 km to the south of the proving ground ( which is still very busy).
You do see some interesting things trundling around their from time to time.
At the moment, the weather is exactly like the first photo, mud and water everywhere!
Tommy in WA has one of the inter prototypes in unrestored condition, a very impressive vehicle.
Cheers,
Mike.
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Thanks Mike ... I'll have to watch my 'T's ... or just elongate the word a bit more...
Mike
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One of our ATA members was heavily involved in this trial as well as the later Mack and Mog acquisitions and from discussions held with him on the subject it seems that somewhere along the line there developed some deep and damaging "personality" clashes in the upper echelons of ADE, IH and Ford. As a result of these rifts becoming so completely untenable, the whole venture of local manufacture was eventually scrapped, and as mentioned elsewhere, an "off the shelf" product was purchased. This attitude carried on across the board as at this time communication between IH (who at the time was supplying the then current trucks for the army) and the Army became so tenuous that International bit the bullet and the Army went ahead and bought the Mogs and Macks off the shelf. Not long after this IH ceased manufacture in Australia.
The other contender in the 1 ton GS (commonly called ITONGS within ADE) acquisition bid, the Ford entrant, remained at Monegeetta for a number of years, long after the trials were finished, as the local runabout and proved to be almost unbreakable, what with its commonality of parts with the local Falcon 250. (Remember the 250 odd 4x4 Ford Falcon XY utes that were sold in NSW and Qld - that's where a lot of the 4x4 parts that were set aside for this particular ITONGS vehicle were disposed of when the deal with the Army fell through).
To my mind this was one of the saddest times for the military as a whole when we suddenly gave up designing and manufacturing vehicles suitable for our ops (and I may add, in the case of the Mk3/4/F! trays, we were leaps and bounds ahead of the others!) and started to buy often less capable and more complicated to operate equipment off the shelf that had to be modified before use. We still haven't learnt, except for the Bushmaster and Hawkeii that are locally made.