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While the designation "International" has been part of its identity for decades, it took on a little extra meaning when International Truck and Engine Corp. recently offered a first look at its new big bore diesel engines. That's because the new 11 to 13 L engines, scheduled to debut in the company's Class 8 vehicles in 2007, have a heritage every bit as international as the name.

"It's always a little presumptuous and perhaps a little self-serving to talk about events being historic," said Dee Kaput, president of International's Truck Group. "But I submit to you that it is a historic event for this company. The transformation that we are representing here today is being bold about where we're going in the heavy and severe service truck business.

"Integrated solutions are the way of the future, given where we're headed in emissions for '07 and '10. It is up to us to provide for the marketplace the kind of products, the kind of systems solutions that will deliver functionality, quality and performance the marketplace needs while achieving emission standards and regulations that are mandated."

"It is a true step up in size from our market-leading midrange diesel engines that we have today," added Jack Allen, president, International Engine Group. "This is a true big bore engine, it's not an extension of our existing platforms."

The new inline, six-cylinder engines are the first tangible result of a strategic agreement between International and Germany's MAN Nutzfahrzeuge to collaborate on design, development, sourcing and manufacturing of components and systems for commercial trucks and diesel engines. That the collaboration was announced in December of last year and the engines were previewed at the recent Mid-America Trucking Show was a sign of how focused the alliance was from the start.

"Clearly when we did that collaboration, the expectations of both companies were that there was going to be products that would result from that," Allen said. "So at the time of the collaboration, we had a pretty good idea this was what we were going to do and everything just came together very quickly that we were able to move forward.

# posted by Medical Information : 4:10 AM