Pinzgauer

The Pinzgauer, made as a 4x4 and a 6x6, is the Haflinger's younger but bigger brother. This is no feather-weight. It is aimed at that very serious segment of the market - vehicles capable of carrying a ton and a half or more cross-country. Again, Steyr's Pinzgauer embodies radical ideas. Swing axles, rather than the more common live axles, give independent suspension. That could compromise ground clearance, so drop-hubs are used to raise the diff's well and truly out of harm's way.

Australian imports came with either 2.5L or 2.7L 4-cyl air-cooled engines - no water-based system to freeze and no radiator to get punctured. Newer models have a 2.4L 6-cyl turbo-diesel from VW and it is water-cooled (- Tony Corke); have to use that anti-freeze now.

The Pinzgauer is a forward control, of course. It's all logical but the result is expensive and sales are mostly to the serious user - the military, contractors and 4WD tour operators.

The one-ton-plus market has always been a difficult one to make money in - the vehicles are definitely not cars but nor yet heavy trucks. Land-Rover tried with the series 2A/2B forward control models, but they were not successful. They tried again with the military-only 101 forward control but did not produce a civilian version, despite flirting with a prototype - the Llama. Now that the 101s have reached the end of their service life the British army is replacing them with ..... Pinzgauers! The only real alternatives were Unimogs (too big and expensive) and 6x6 derivatives of the Land-Rover, such as the Australian Perentie.

The nature of the vehicle: There is no compromise in the engineering and almost no concession to styling. Oh alright, there is no concession to styling.

You can clearly see the way that the swing-axle suspension operates. The axles swing about an axis down the centre of the chassis backbone. The drive is also taken down this axis. Each of the six half-shafts is driven by its own crown wheel after the differential so there are no universal joints or CV joints on the half-shafts, except for one in each of the front steering-swivels.

Carefully does it through the rocks.

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See the 4x4, 6x6, [2], TurboD, mil', 16/4/2000 and Steyr Daimler Puch pages

Photos 2, 3, 4 by Tony Corke