by Nick Drew | Thu 17 Feb 2022
Historical Liebherr Brochures (Part One) #ThrowbackThursday
Our German friend, contractor, author and part time journalist Dirk Bömer, has kindly contributed more material for the Digger Man Blog this week, in the form of promotional brochures from the past produced by Liebherr.
I’m sure many of us of a certain age will remember some of the items in this collection. I know as a youngster, I used to have many of them on my bedroom wall as posters, some of which had come as a full colour insert in the Construction News, yes, I really was that sad!
It was such a passion for me, that I often used to write to the manufacturers and dealers to request brochures and general memorabilia, back in those days, any posted material from them came to me direct from Liebherr GB's premises in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. One of my biggest regrets is that I never kept it all as I grew up and other interests took over!
Thankfully some people like Dirk for instance, have done the sensible thing and kept hold of these items and is will to share them with likeminded individuals.
In his own words, Dirk offers a bit of background on them. “These Liebherr brochures come from the 1970’s and 80’s.
The type designations of the wheeled excavators begin with an "A" for "Autobagger" while the track machines carry an "R" for "Raupenbagger".
This machine designation is still used on the current range of hydraulic excavators.
In the early 1980’s the models with the white painted upper part of the cabin were introduced, beginning with the 942, it was the start of “2” Series generation of machines, the internal designation was "The Worldwide Line".
Liebherr had high hopes on selling those machines to the American market, having in mind that they had their own factory in Newport News, Virginia.
In Europe the excavators were made in Kirchdorf (A-Models) and in Colmar, France (R-Models). This had the advantage, that in the important market in France they could sell the machines as being a French manufactured excavator”.
It’s really interesting to look back on these old brochures, and we thank Dirk for sharing them. In part two we will take a look at the tracked machine brochures that he sent in to us.