In the 1970s, Europe’s truck manufacturers had a problem. They needed medium-sized trucks to fill in the gap in their lineups. So, as a solution, the Club of Four cab was designed. As the name suggests, it was initially used by four different brands throughout Europe. There was Volvo of Sweden:
Saviem of France:
Magirus of Germany:
And DAF of the Netherlands:
Things, however, would get even more complicated. The European truck market was rapidly going from an industry where different countries used different brands of truck, to one where basically all European brands were sold throughout Europe, and smaller brands got swallowed up by bigger companies. This resulted in the Magirus becoming an Iveco:
The Saviem becoming a Berliet, and later a Renault:
And with Renault’s purchase of Mack in 1979, the truck cab even made it across the pond as the Mack Midliner, complete with the option of a nose (conventional-style hooded trucks were also sold by Renault as the C-Series, but due to European tastes weren’t as popular as they were in North America). Iveco also exported their Club of Four trucks to the States for a short while as well.
I don’t think any one vehicle design has gotten around so much. At least with most of the incessantly rebadged GM vehicles like the Trailblazer and Escudo/Sidekick/Tracker cars, they stayed mostly under the GM umbrella. The original 4 brands are corporately completely unrelated. Especially interesting when you consider how many less truck brands there are out there compared to car brands. Like half of Europe’s truck brands sold a Club of Four variant at one point.
Interestingly, Volvo, Renault, and DAF still share a cab for their smaller trucks, the Volvo FL, DAF LF, and Renault Range D respectively. It’s a tiny bit less blatant, but you can spot the shared body panels pretty quickly. Renault Trucks these days are actually owned by Volvo, so it makes sense they’d share a truck design.
The DAF variant, through parent PACCAR, has also made it to North America under the Kenworth and Peterbilt brand names.
In a way, the ghost of the Club of Four lives on.