Two posts in one day, cuz I really wanna catch up with my lore.
1976: Releasing the research, pt.1: The FAAL Ochlosia
Okay. The idea behind the Ochlosia is that ever since the Mk1 Plebia Fourgonnette went out of production in the mid sixties (Yep, mid sixties. That plank on wheels.), FAAL had simply no true utilitarian options.
Sure, there was the Mesaia and Foreia wagons… But a wagon can only haul so much and be so practical at the end of the day. Professionnals and people who really needed to carry heavy stuff were reaching out to other brands, Anhultz and their everlasting Transportwagen to only cite one… It was time to try and get them back. With squares. And modern tech.
The van was rear wheel drive, front engined, with the engine in between the two front seats and a deported gearing command that sat way high on the big central console/engine cover. No bench seat like in most vans… Sure, you could get three passengers in the front provided one of them had a full Adidas tracksuit, a bottle of Vodka and was called Boris, and get him to squat on the engine cover, but… It wasn’t really legal. And good luck getting a russian dude in France with Germany still being half communist and blocking stuff at the time.
… I think I’m getting lost in thoughts.
SO. The van. Galvanized half-monocoque half-ladder body, to allow for a low loading line and still support enough weight. Regular steel panels. Two sliding doors. Front McPherson suspension and rear solid axle leaf spring. 300mm disc brakes all around, ventilated in the front, solid in the back. Given the shape of the rear, no dual doors, just a big old hatch, with very heavy gas springs, that went way down until the loading line.
The entire black bar and license plate ensemble lifts up with the hatch, as well as the upper part of the taillights.
The Ochlosia had two versions: A fully utilitarian version, with a separation between the cabin and the cargo area, and a people mover, called the Ochlosia Camper
… Or… the Camper Ochlosia, as the badging suggests, idk. People just called it the camper.
For some reason, the van variant was offered with a fully glassed version… and for some reason² that’s the configuration the press car is in. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The Van was motorized by a single engine to make it as cheap to buy and to maintain as possible: The 1.8 184S18Ce2UE that had been in the top trim mk3 Foreia for two years now. At 85hp it didn’t look like much BUT, a newly designed 5 speed gearbox with very wide gears and a very, VERY short first gear made up for that, and allowed the van a carrying capacity of 1700kg and a towing capacity of 1400kg. For a van with a dry weight of around 1250kg.
The price to pay was an engine that was absolutely screaming at 4100rpm at 120km/h… And get that, the engine is right NEXT to you when you’re driving. Needless to say the Ochlosia wasn’t a highway van.
Amongst other specs, you get a 150km/h top speed (dry, of course), a 14sec 0-100km/h and 14.5L/100km.
The Ochlosia Camper now, that’s another story.
This van was open cab all the way to the trunk, only available in fully glassed version. It had hubcaps, chrome bumpers, a chrome grille, chrome door handles and optional foglights. Not to mention extra paint options. You could even get a quirky looking spare wheel holder on the tailgate… which of course, meant heavier gas springs.
The five speed option was retained, but tuned towards drivability rather than towing capacity… And more, it was mated to the 2.2 sixer 236S22Ce3UE from the Klinos.
The goal with that van / people mover thingy is that it was made to do whatever you wanted on the inside. But it came with two three-seats benches, fully removable, that would leave a flat floor when removed, and a 8 seater registration. What you did with those benches, and the space on the inside, was entirely up to you. … Yeah you can see where the “camper” name comes from.
Best part? Thanks to the car-like gearing, the 6 cylinder had only a barely worse fuel consumption than the van variant, at 14.7l/100 and the Camper could TECHNICALLY reach 164km/h and had a 0-100 of 14.5sec.
Okay, that’s it for the Ochlosia.
Seeing what was left in their bank of research, the marketting team saw only one body variant that was interesting and could bring in new markets: A coupe. They wanted it for next year.
The engineering department, though, was deep into developing the future of the carburator… and managed to make the marketting team chill a bit, saying that they could introduce the new coupe with a very fancy fuel feeding technology that could improve both efficiency AND performance at the same time.
Coming next: The return of sports cars and Fuel Injection