From show-stopping tie-ins to Optimus Prime, NASCAR and tire-smoking tractors, to more mundane matters such as fuel efficiency improvements and automated transmission sales, Daimler Trucks North America used its press preview hour at the Mid-America Trucking Show to highlight a wide range of industry-leading products from the company’s various brands – and to hint at more to come.
Among the more interesting items, and a likely crowd favorite when the doors officially open Thursday, Daimler’s Western Star booth features a set of very serious trucks with plenty of chrome and color. The standout, based on the number of Kentucky Expo Center staff and other passers-by with exhibit floor access who posed beside it for selfies, the star of the show could well be Optimus Prime, the heroic lead in the upcoming “Transformers: Age of Extinction” movie.
And while the wow factor was high, Western Star officials hinted that if you imagine Optimus Prime without some of the movie makeup, you’ll catch a sneak peak at the new, Western Star-badged highway tractor – one meant to carry the marque’s cachet and still hold its own against the industry’s most fuel efficient tractors.
To be unveiled in the fall, the new aero-styled Western Star will be badged as a 5700.
Also revealed on Wednesday, Alliance Truck Parts – DTNA’s private label, all-makes parts brand – will upgrade it’s NASCAR sponsorship from the Nationwide series to a Sunday Sprint Cup car with Team Penske and driver Brad Keselowski.
DTNA also noted that it has become the market share leader in Class 6-8 vocational truck sales and in Class 6-7 medium-duty.
