Alliance May 24

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Corr, what a fine restoration in the making

Mon 20 Aug 2018

Corr, what a fine restoration in the making

Brendon told us that one of these was the company’s first ever 360-degree hydraulic excavator, which his father Eugene Corr purchased second hand in the late 1970’s. Brendon is quite clearly a passionate plant man and he has acquired two of these machines to perform a full restoration from the ground up. In a workshop Brendon showed me a new engine bonnet which has been professionally fabricated and painted in the original Priestman orange and a new cab has also been fabricated and sports the white paintwork that was standard on the 108S back in those days. The Ford six-cylinder engine has been restored to and is waiting to be reunited with the base machine.  The donor 108S was also parked out in the yard. No expense is being spared on this exciting project and its expected that the machine will eventually be in factory finish condition once all the work has been done, I am excited to see the finished article and will be looking to visit again for a retro-test drive opportunity in the future, as I used to operate a couple of these when I was on with Wimpey back in the late 70’s early 80’s. The Priestman Mustang 108S was originally launched by the Hull based manufacturer as a direct competitor to Hymac’s hugely successful 580C model. In fact, when Priestman first launched this machine they gave it the numbering 580S, something that Hymac were not too impressed about, with the whole affair ending in a court battle which Hymac won, resulting in a change of number for the new Priestman model which became the 108S. Pictured above: A poor quality scan of the promotional brochure cover from Priestman.    Lookout for my Corr/Hyundai article feature in a forthcoming edition of Earthmovers magazine.      

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