My cousin was a draftsman at Mack during the Renault malaise. At the time you did see Magirus, Iveco, etc. showing up on our roads, so they weren't alone.
Those signal switches broke all the time. I sold lot's of them. I've been in Mack parts for 40 years now and yes they were hard to get some parts for. That's a Renault engine not a Scania. For what they were intended for they actually were pretty dependable, but they weren't a Mack. Renault owned Mack so they built these rebadged trucks for the mid size market.
We had one for a delivery rig at the concrete plant. It was called the BED LINER. It had a dump on it and wasn't really anything wrong with it but being used to MB's, DM's and RD's and an occasional 'C' model and Superliner, it just left a little to be desired. I drove it but I drove EVERYTHING. It went from here to there and back but that was it. I'd rather have an old 'B' model with a Thermodyne and a quad (5x4) than it BUT the a.c. was nice.
The only thing on that truck that is mack is the bulldog! The air over hydraulic brakes were a joke but the rest of the truck was not that bad. The engine was to small, but held up pretty good for only being 175hp.
These things were impossible to get parts for back in 1987. Everything was metric. It took us 7 weeks to replace a damaged air line fitting that screwed into the dry air tank. But I will say that they really didn’t make too much trouble.
I drove one in single screw form as a city tractor in Chicago the one I was stuck in had had 6 spd manual it had good heat someone put a aftermarket stereo cassette player in it it was just a slug of a peace of crap experimental ???? Who knows what it was humiliating to be seen that job only lasted 4 months thank god it was for a small hole in the wall Cartage company that was contracted to a large Paper & coragated company both companies are now gone & in the history books
I wanna see a skit with this and the Joe Pesci green screen “what the $&$& is this piece of @&@&?” Ugly thing for sure, and a massive pile of crap. Don’t see any anymore and for good reason. 90s class 6 stuff really the only solid choice IMO is Navistar, those were decent trucks.