AEC’S CONTINENTAL BRIDGEHEAD WITH WILLÈME
AEC and Leyland fought an increasingly desperate battle for market share and export achievements in the 1950s and vied with each other to take over businesses that might otherwise be added their own or rival empires. Leyland with its acquisitions of Albion and Scammell had gained slightly the upper hand but AEC had snapped up Crossley and Maudslay and was willing to explore completely new fields of endeavour - as we showed way back in 2006 with its mighty 17-75 litre 18cu. yd. Dumptruk (made incidentally in Alcester and not, as the heading implied, Coventry).
Like Leyland, AEC was opening up marketing agreements and engineering collaborations wherever it could in the world and was enjoying success with its ACLOs in South America and Spain, where it came to a manufacturing agreement with Barreiros of
