Alpha Better

More and more Foden Alphas are being preserved and restored these days, while a fair number are still hard at work. Dan Mountain has stripped and rebuilt this one, with stunning results

- Dougie Rankine

The Foden Alpha 2 is a curious truck these days. Because it was the last model produced by the manufacturer, loyal customers held onto them much longer than they would have normally. There are still a fair number of them working today; there’s no room for sentimentality in transport – they’re still at work because they can do the job.

Time waits for no man, woman or vehicle though and the last models are now approaching 14 years old. This means a number of Alphas have already made it to preservation. Nice ones are sought after. One of the nicest restored Alphas is this one, which is owned by Dan Mountain. Dan carried out all the mechanical work on the truck himself, and the end result is, we’re sure you’ll agree, stunning.

Excellent truck

As it turned out, Foden’s swansong was an excellent truck; superior to the similar huge-selling Daf CF in many ways. With the truck bowing out at Euro 3, the Alpha was never associated with the emissions-control problems that beset newer trucks. It went out on a high, right at the end of the era of trucks that made noise and smoke and didn’t whimper and go into limp mode at the first sign of sensor trouble.

So on the one hand we have a touch of rose-tinted nostalgia for simpler times, before digital tachos, the Driver CPC, credit crunches, referendums and orange presidents. On the other, we have a truck that is still a viable proposition today.

The design may date back to 2001, but the Alpha still looks modern; it has aged well. The Daf CF can still be specced with an identical roof pod to the Alpha XL and, with a set of private plates on the latter, you could easily convince Joe Public that this is a truck much younger than it actually is.

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