The Carbodies FX4
In 1982, Carbodies, who had been producing the FX4 for Austin and Mann and Overton, took over the cab's intellectual property rights when BL, Austin's parent company lost interest in it and began to produce it under their own name. The old Austin engine was no longer available because, during Michael Edwardes' reconstruction of British Leyland, the plant had been sold to India. Carbodies selected the Land Rover 2286cc diesel engine in its place and also offered the similar-sized Land Rover petrol engine as an option. The new model was branded the FX4R, with R standing for Rover. The FX4R had some improvements over the previous FX4 models, including power steering and full servo brakes, but its performance and reliability were poor and the cab gained a bad reputation.
Some proprietors replaced the Land Rover engine with the Perkins/Mazda 2977 cc diesel, which improved the performance of the cab dramatically. Whilst powerful and reliable, the Perkins conversion gained a reputation for being noisy at idle and, mistakenly for causing cracks in the chassis. The chassis problem, which was also occurring on late model Austins was traced to a manufacturing fault.
In order to regain lost sales due to the FX4R's failure, Carbodies took old chassis and suspension and refurbished them, fitting new bodywork and the original-type 2520cc diesel engines re-imported from India. Because these vehicles used refurbished chassis and suspension components, they were required to have a registration mark starting with the letter Q rather than the current year letter and thus this model was known as the FX4Q. All were fitted automatic gearboxes, but not the power steering fitted to the FX4R. Sold by the dealer Rebuilt Cabs Ltd, they were marginally cheaper than the FX4R.
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