Quote Originally Posted by mauser View Post
I'm not sure where it was said, but when the deletion of the side vents occured in '74 I was told that was the changeover from the HQ van body to preceed the introduction of the HJ van.

I think the point is if the addition of an M21 in a van coupled with bucket seats and a couple of goodies cost more to option than the Sandman package; who would do it?

Do you know how much a say V8 Sandman was over the cost of the base V8 van? I have seen a options costing sheet somewhere for a hq but don't know the date of that.

Mauser
Maybe the side vents were deleted as an early introduction of HJ tooling, but nothing else is changed so the body is still HQ and very different to HJ. My guess is it was a cost saving measure, vents were a carry over from HD-HG roof (same basic roof) and were probably un-necessary in HQ.

M21 would cost the same on a V8 Belmont as a V8 Belmont XX7 as it was not standard on either. Buckets might have cost a little bit on Belmont but remember Sandman also had stripes (in a box), N66 rims, GTS wheel, dash etc which made the XX7 package dearer than a standard V8 Belmont van to start with. If you actually wanted to option all the XX7 bits on a Belmont it would be silly as the XX7 would be cheaper, but if you only wanted a 4spd and buckets then the optioned Belmont would probably have been cheaper. And in HQ and HJ you didn't have to have the stripes as they are not standard on XX7, you had to get the dealer to fit them. So this would make the XX7 even more attractive to a tradesman etc if they wanted a slightly higher spec than standard but didn't want the stripes. This is probably why DL7 was added in HX and HZ so people could order the package but not have to suffer the stripes since they were factory fitted for these 2 x series.

I haven't got all that costing stuff yet.