Rod Chapman•26 Jan 2017

REVIEW

MAN TGX D38 road test

Name: MAN TGX D38 road test
Brand: MAN

Will MAN's new D38-engined TGX signal a turning point for the brand Down Under?

When it comes to competition, the cut-throat nature of the Aussie truck market is just as harsh as the local landscape. The ability to get the job done, as reliably and cost-effectively as possible, is paramount – and that's exactly what MAN is touting with its latest heavy-duty weapon, the TGX D38.

It's been in the pipeline for years but now it has arrived on our shores, ready to lock horns not just with its Euro cab-over siblings, but plenty of the bonneted brigade too.

Trucksales.com.au got a first taste of the TGX D38 at the model's Australian press launch at Queensland's Mount Cotton facility last October. This time around, however, the media demo unit had found its way to Westar Trucks in Derrimut, in Melbourne's western suburbs, so the chance to take it for another spin was too good to refuse.

The plan? Climb north from Melbourne up the Calder Highway to Castlemaine, then drop down again via the A300 to Ballarat, then Geelong, before returning to Melbourne. The 350 kilometre route takes in everything from freeways to winding single carriageway.

As it turned out, the day also served up some testing temperatures for the D38, the mercury topping out at 38 degrees C – a nice complement for the gradients we encountered as we climbed to nearly 600 metres above sea level, before returning to the coast.

POWERING AHEAD

The new D38 is the latest engine to hit the MAN line-up, and is essentially an up-scale version of the German firm's D20 and D26 in-line six-cylinder turbo-diesels. Utilising a compacted graphite iron (CGI) cylinder head and barrels along with various aluminium components, the engine weighs 1345kg – 160kg lighter than its predecessor.

Unlike the norm, the engine adopts a 'top-down' cooling system that cools from the head down to the bottom of the engine, while it also uses twin air-to-water intercoolers.

This 15.2-litre in-line six, good for 560hp (412kW) and 2700Nm in Australian trim, is mated with ZF's TraXon 12-speed automated manual transmission, instead of the TipMatic2 transmission found in other MAN products. The TraXon system offers three different drive modes – Idle Speed Driving (essentially a crawler gear for fine manoeuvring), Speed Shifting (for faster upshifts between 10th and 12th and rapid downshifts on declines) and EfficientRoll (which sees the engine disengage and revert to idle when coasting down inclines of a suitable grade).

The engine also has twin turbochargers to help it meet Euro6 emissions standards: a small-diameter turbo for low engine speeds and a large-diameter turbo for high engine speeds.

All up, MAN says the new D38 is three per cent more efficient than its predecessor.

While the large XLX High Roof cab is a carryover, it's equipped with myriad creature comforts to make life of the road as pleasant as possible, while the D38's suite of active and passive safety systems brings the model bang up to date.

Our demo truck was sitting in Westar Derrimut's expansive yard resplendent in its limited edition black, grey and red paint – a scheme limited to the first 15 production examples in Australia. Hooked up to a single trailer decked out with some striking curtains, we were ready to roll with MAN Product Training Manager Steve Gibbins riding shotgun.

IN THE CAB

Climbing in is easy thanks to a door that opens to 90 degrees, three steps and two sturdy grab rails, while the ISRI air suspension seat offers all manner of adjustment.

The steering wheel, with integrated controls, is air adjustable for both tilt and reach, and while there's no 'dead pedal' as such there is a roomy spot for your left foot.

It's a commanding place to be; all controls are nearby, it's roomy and vision is excellent, thanks to twin standard/spot side mirrors, a nearside kerb mirror, and a front bumper mirror. The side mirrors have heaters and the standard and spot lenses can be adjusted independently.

The instrumentation is logically laid out and legible, with a large analogue tacho and speedo bookending an LCD display and a large bank of warning lights. There's a separate module to the left for comms and the sat-nav, plus other banks of pushbuttons on the angled side of the centre stack and on the right for the vehicle's lighting.

The quality of the interior is high and the fit and finish of the various panels is good. I liked the faux carbon-fibre strip along the dash, which helped break up the two-tone plastics.

On the floor, between the 36-litre fridge and the driver's seat, is the trailer brake, the handbrake, and the transmission switch, the latter a simple affair featuring Drive, Neutral, Reverse, and what is essentially a crawler version of Drive and Reverse, for fine manoeuvring. On the other side of the driver's seat, also on the floor, is the hand unit for the airbags, allowing you to raise or lower the rear of the truck while either in or out of the cab.

There's no shortage of cab storage with plenty of trays and drawers for knick-knacks complemented by three massive cupboards across the top of the windscreen.

HIT THE ROAD

After turning the key, I eased the TGX D38 out of Westar and headed for the motorway. From a standstill the big 15.2-litre engine skips through the gears lightly and quickly, and giving it some juice produces a low growl that's gruff but pleasing to the ear. There's a nice weight to the steering too – it's light enough but it still provides a good feedback.

Rolling down the highway, it was hard to not to be impressed with the cab's comfort; it's a remarkably quiet and well-appointed place to be.

In Australian spec the main sleeper mattress is now thicker and more sumptuous. At nearly 2.3 metres long, there's ample room for the beefiest of blokes, plus a reading light, a folding hand rail and internal access to a nearside storage compartment.

This storage bin, also accessed externally, can swallow a heap of gear – there's another one on the offside, although this has external access only.

At 188cm tall I still had room to stand and move about and getting into the bottom bunk was easy. For two-up work there's a drop-down top bunk too, although this gets the thinner mattress. A privacy curtain screens off the bunks from the rest of the cab.

On the highway the subdued interior noise level is impressive. There's a bit of wind noise, a little bit of road noise, and a tiny bit of engine noise – but it was easy to maintain a conversation with Steve.

With the mercury soaring, the D38's climate control had its work cut out for it. With the air-con set to low and the fan blasting away, the temperature in the cab was comfortable, if not icy. A hotter day would have probably found the system's limit, and we certainly didn't bother opening the cab's roof hatch.

GOBS OF GRUNT

The serenity of the cab was in stark contrast to the mechanical might being wrought just beneath our feet – where the massive six-cylinder engine was efficiently converting diesel and air into thousands of glorious Newton-metres. All it took was a minimal depression of my right foot to unleash 2700Nm which, importantly, were at the trucks' disposal from just 930rpm to 1350rpm.

Fully loaded at 42 tonne and with our cargo of concrete blocks in the tautliner, the D38 simply ate up the not-insignificant hills thrown before it. On most inclines the TraXon 12-speed AMT simply dropped back to 11th or 10th, all the while still maintaining a solid 80km/h. On one particularly steep grade the transmission dropped down to ninth and 40km/h, but it wasn't struggling – it simply put its head down and got on with it.

I left the transmission in automatic mode for the majority of this drive, content to let the truck's electronic brains handle the gear selection while I concentrated on maintaining an appropriate speed over the hilly terrain. Manual changes are carried out by flicking a right-hand stalk on the steering column forward or back, and they're carried out with reasonable speed and precision.

That same stalk also controls the six-stage intarder, which blends the exhaust brake, engine brake and the intarder itself to deliver six stages of braking force up to 3500Nm. It's a highly effective tool, and one that I'm sure with greater familiarity would allow you to all but dispense with the service brakes. Using the intarder is a matter of flicking the gear-selector stalk up or down, while pushing the button on the end of the stalk immediately employs maximum retardation – a handy thing on steep declines.

The D38 also comes equipped with adaptive cruise control – a very welcome feature that's growing increasingly common in the car world, and following suit in trucks. Basically this allows the truck to follow the vehicle in front at a set distance. If the vehicle speeds up the truck speeds up until it reaches the set threshold; if the vehicle slows down the truck slows down, while always maintaining the set gap. It doesn't sound like much but it takes a fair bit of the strain out of the driving task. Regular cruise control and a speed limiter are also available.

With or without the cruise control set, when coasting down a hill it's possible to set the truck to your current cruise speed by dabbing the service brakes. This is handy to keep your speed in check on downhill grades.

Speaking of downhill grades, the D38 also has an EfficientRoll feature that – when certain criteria are met – the truck disengages from its current gear and returns to idle. It's essentially coasting in 'angel gear', so to speak, to reduce fuel consumption.

Further reducing that fuel bill in the future will be MAN's GPS-based cruise control system, EfficientCruise. This will become available once the topographic maps for Australia are released, at some as yet unconfirmed point down the track.

At 100km/h in 12th gear the big six was spinning at 1300rpm, where it's still benefiting from maximum torque yet delivering decent fuel economy. MAN says it settled on a diff ratio of 3.36 for this production D38, after initially experimenting with ratios of 3.76 and 3.08.

On the climb to Castlemaine the trip computer was sitting on 1.5km/lt, but after dropping down to Geelong and the flat run back to Westar it has edged up to 2.0km/lt – a healthy enough figure for a full load over widely varying terrain.

In any case, the D38 has previously already proved its worth here in Oz in B-double applications up to 62 tonne, so 42 was never really going to test its mettle. The truck comes fitted with two diesel tanks totalling 1060lt, plus an 80lt AdBlue tank. The D38 uses EGR and SCR to meet its Euro6 standard.

The D38 handled the bumps beautifully over the course of this drive, the rear airbag suspension and front parabolic springs doing a top job of isolating the blows. In fact, my ISRI seat wasn't working to anywhere near its potential, as all but the majority of bumps were effectively filtered out before they reached the cab.

SAFETY FIRST

While our test vehicle wasn't equipped with any airbags, it does have an ECE-R29-rated cab and a range of active and passive safety systems. The cab also has deformable cab mounts, which actually allow it to move forward slightly in the event of a frontal collision to absorb more of the impact.

Standard MAN safety features include antilock (and electronic) disc brakes, stability control, rollover prevention and traction control, while the D38 also comes with MAN's Safety Pack Active+.

This package comprises autonomous emergency braking, lane keeping assist, the aforementioned predictive cruise control and an emergency stopping signal. The autonomous emergency braking warns the driver via audible and visual alerts of an impending collision. If the driver still fails to act, the truck will apply the brakes itself to avoid (or at least mitigate) the collision.

Lane keeping assist issues an audible warning on the relevant side of the truck to alert the driver that the truck has strayed from its lane. This can be a very handy thing if a driver is becoming drowsy, but it can be switched off if desired (say, when driving in the city).

The emergency stopping signal, meanwhile, flashes the truck's brake light to warn following vehicles of an emergency situation.

These are all very worthy features that will help keep drivers safe and expensive assets on the road, although it would be good to see airbags and blind spot monitoring included as part of the package.

THE BOTTOM LINE

This 350km test drive wasn't long, but it was telling. Over some decent gradients, at full load and on a blisteringly hot day, MAN's new D38 did everything asked of it, and at a reasonable fuel economy too.

What's more, the D38 does all this with a level of comfort and an array of clever features that will make it an enviable proposition for any driver. MAN is a small player in the Australian market but, based on initial tests of the TGX D38, its slice of the pie deserves to grow bigger.

ENGINE: D38 15.2-litre in-line six-cylinder turbo-diesel

POWER: 412kW (560hp)

TORQUE: 2700Nm at 930-1350rpm

EMISSIONS: Euro6

TRANSMISSION: 12-speed TraXon AMT

CONFIGURATION: 6x4

FRONT SUSPENSION: Parabolic springs

REAR SUSPENSION: Airbags

FRONT AXLE: MAN VOK-09 dropped axle

REAR AXLES: MAN hypoid axles with diff locks/power divider

GCM: Up to 120,000kg (on specification)

GVM: 26,000kg