A project forced on both Ford and County, as well as all other manufacturers in South Africa, was the Atlantis Diesel Engine Programme (ADE). Its name stemmed from a town in the Western Cape, called Atlantis.
At the time, the Government of South Africa wanted to gain its independence from outside suppliers of key components, such as engines, with transmissions and more to follow on later. Let’s be positive and say it was an interesting project!
It must have cost the industry many millions of whatever currency you choose, a pile of engineering work, and very thoughtful marketing for companies like Ford. It’s a story on its own really, but, in short, County had to become very involved in this, along with Ford in South Africa.
Some models would have naturally fallen into the Ford system on these, but not for all. To fit Perkins engines into Ford tractors was a bitter pill to swallow, but for County – which only got to convert two models in the end (the 764 and 1164) – it really worked rather well!
PART 4
For me, the 1164 P was a quantum leap forward for that model in South Africa. Perhaps in retrospect we should have looked harder at an AC (Altitude Compensation) version, as was done for the 6600-based
