Thomas Stokes's blog : Advantages of the Renault Magnum 2021 truck
It is brutal, it radiates power and strength, with its appearance in 1990, it shocked the carriers and made the competitors despondent. Defying all the laws of aerodynamics, the creators of the Renault Magnum were the first to be puzzled by the driver's comfort so much that they created a truly revolutionary model.
The modern Renault Magnum is the fourth generation of the very first Magnum AE, which in turn came to replace the R Major on the assembly line. The car is rightfully a long-liver; its revolutionary design with minor changes has been living on the assembly line for 22 years.
Work on the creation began long before the car was presented to the general public. The French themselves call 1979, when the first sketches were laid down on paper, and only 11 years later the finished truck rolled out of the gates of the plant in the city of Bourque-en-Bresse near Lyon. It is worth noting that Magnum has always been and is being produced only at one plant in France.
The philosophy of Renault Magnum at the very beginning was different from other manufacturers and was based on increasing the personal space for the driver. If you try to describe the car in one word, then, of course, it will be - comfort.
When designing the car, the main task of the designers was to maximize the interior living space of the cab. They also raised the question of completely eliminating the influence of the noise of a running engine on the driver. And such a solution was found: for the first time in the truck industry, the modular design method was applied. Residential module - a cabin, mounted on a four-point independent suspension to the chassis module.
But, perhaps, one of the most important advantages of the Renault Magnum was that it was the first car with a flat floor in the cockpit. The main competitors will have such machines in the lineup much later. Mercedes will release its Megaspace cab only seven years later, many of these cabins do not exist at all.
For a flat floor, the drivers had to pay in five steps, only after overcoming them, you can get into the cab at a height of more than one and a half meters above the road. The nuance of a flat floor, which has equalized all Renault Magnum drivers in jokes and jokes. But the French would not be French and could even benefit from this. They made an absolutely locomotive ladder with side steps and handrails. Turning an ordinary boarding into a car into a kind of ceremonial, and I assure you that most drivers do not experience any discomfort from this procedure, but rather the opposite.
Having entered the series in 1991, the car immediately won the prestigious title "Truck of the Year 1991". At the time, its design was comparable to that of a spacecraft. If we remember what the domestic auto industry was like at that time, then at best we will smile.
The instrument panel of the first Magnum AE was more like a power plant dispatcher's console. Electronic control systems tracked more than thirty indicators, each of which was duplicated by a light on the panel. Now everything is back to normal, and displays and microprocessors have replaced the garland. The central place in the instrument cluster is occupied by the tachometer, below is the window of the electronic speedometer. On the left - arrow "tips" of the fuel level, coolant temperature and battery charge. Of the control features, the location of the automatic transmission control joystick seemed strange to me. It is located under the driver's right hand in place of the steering column switches.
Over the twenty-year history of its existence, the classic Magnuma cockpit cube has grown in size. If on the first samples the height in the cabin was only 1.87 m, then in the latest version this figure exceeded the two-meter mark and reached 2.07 m. The useful volume of the cabin is 8 m3. In practice, this assumes that a company of four truckers can easily sit at a table and while away the evening with their favorite drink.
There were also drawbacks: so on the first cars, the independent cab suspension when driving on uneven roads had a tendency to rock the driver. There were even bikes, as if at sharp turns the chassis first turned, and only after a while the cab turned next. Later, the defect was corrected: additional control cranes for the cab pillows, shock absorbers and rubber bumpers were installed.
The release time of the model coincided with the acquisition by Renault Industrial Vehicles of the American company Mack Truck in 1990. Thus, some models began to install V 8 Mack EE9 engines with a volume of 16.4 liters, with a capacity of 520-560 hp. Renault engines had more modest characteristics, but for their time 380-420hp. it was quite decent performance for a 12-liter inline-six.
In 2001, Renault Industrial Vehicles itself became part of Volvo and became part of the group under the Renault Trucks name. Since then, there has been a consistent unification of components and assemblies brought by the company to uniform standards. In 2005, Renault Magnum trucks began to be equipped with new power units with a working volume of 12.0 and 13.0 liters, designated DXi 12 and DXi 13. The first develops 440-480 hp, and the second 500-520 hp. at 1430 ... 1800 min. According to TacomaTruckRepair(www.tacomatruck.repair) service specialists, these engines are one of the most reliable. And they are very simple and inexpensive to maintain and repair.
Over the entire period of its existence, Renault Magnum has undergone modernization three times. The model was consistently brought to the ideal, and if the chassis was reloaded the first two times, then in 2010 the emphasis was on the cab. Surprisingly, the facelift did not greatly affect the appearance, and was it necessary? The characteristic square - bulldog silhouette cannot be confused with any truck, it is recognizable everywhere and always.
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