A close look at Western Star’s edgier 57X

Western Star’s 5700XE, its edgy-styled premium road tractor, came out in 2015 and offered buyers a truly distinctive means of truckin,’ as there was nothing else that looked anything like it.

Now the Western Star brand has come up with an even more edgy-looking ride, the 57X, and there’s more to it than sharper lines and the sloped-back grille you see in the photo. The 57X has a new, roomier cab and sleeper, and there’s a host of safety features that most drivers should appreciate, at least when they become accustomed to them.

The old model used an annealed steel cab that dates to the mid-1990s, while this new one gets a larger steel-framed, aluminum-skinned cabin that’s larger yet weighs no more, according to Daimler Trucks North America, the corporate parent. It’s based on that of sister company Freightliner’s Cascadia road tractor, so it is referred to as a Daimler cab. It’s also used on the previously introduced 49X and 47X, both vocational models.

The road-going 57X’s sleeper compartment also comes from the Cascadia, and the difference is apparent when you look at the angle of the side walls. They are now vertical all the way up instead of curving inward. This makes it less identifiable as a Western Star but yields more interior space for storage because upper shelves are deeper. That the interior upper walls are farther from an occupant’s eyes also makes the sleeper look more spacious, which it is.

My experience with the new tractor was at an event last summer at a test facility in Ypsilanti, Mich., near Detroit. I held off on writing about the 57X until it was in production, scheduled for early 2023.

Aside from the cab and sleeper, Daimler representatives emphasized several safety features that come with the standard Detroit Assurance 5.0 package.

The safety features:

Adaptive cruise control keeps the truck at a safe distance from traffic just ahead. It is useful both at cruise speeds and in slow-and-go and stop-and-go traffic.
Active Brake Assist 5, an always-on system that combines camera images and radar signals to detect moving obstacles in front of the truck and begin slowing and stopping it, if necessary. I’ve experienced this before in other trucks, but it was still impressive. It was demonstrated by a Daimler driver with me in the passenger seat. We traveled toward an inflatable car sitting in the lane up ahead. The driver did nothing, but the truck’s brakes came on and brought us to a smoky stop just short of the rubber vehicle. While a good driver shouldn’t ever get into a situation where the brakes must apply automatically, even almost violently in an emergency stop, it can happen if a driver gets distracted or sleepy, and that’s the real world.
Active Side Guard Assist, using a side-facing radar to detect what’s alongside. Warning lights appear if something’s there, and beeping begins if the driver begins steering toward the object.
Active Lane Assist, which includes Lane Keep Assist, Lane Departure Protection, and Steer Assist. Using an electric motor in the steering system adds some muscle and can help reduce fatigue on the road, and makes maneuvering in yards easier.

I was especially interested in Lane Keep Assist because the tedium of constantly adjusting the steering of a car or truck so it’s centered between the white lines has begun to bug me.

I’ve rented a few late-model cars that had the lane-keeping feature, so I knew what to expect, and Daimler people were happy to let me try it out on the Western star 57X using the facility’s oval track and on nearby public highways.

There I found it worked pretty well. Using the forward-facing camera mounted near the top of the windshield and the radar, whose antenna was in the bumper, the system watched the lane stripes and ordered the steering to make constant corrections. It kept the truck in our travel lane in straight stretches and in gentle curves but not in sharp turns, because it didn’t react quickly enough to the bending stripes.

However, it’s an assist system, not an auto-drive, the reps emphasized. The driver must keep his/her hands on the wheel and be ready to take over in such situations. If not, visual warnings flash in the instrument panel and alarms sound, and the driver is ordered to take over. When it’s engaged, the steering wheel offers a bit of a fight if the driver tries to overrule the system by steering left or right, but not when turn signals are used as when changing lanes.

In those sharp turns, the system disconnects and wheel resistance disappears when it realizes that the driver is making proper corrections. It also will do so if painted stripes disappear, and it won’t work if pavement is snow-covered.

Meanwhile, using buttons in the wheel, the driver can tune the system’s “bias” to the right, center or left portion of the lane. I figured a center bias was logical, but the tractor and trailer wheels tended to drift toward the right and occasionally touched the lane stripe there. Then I got a lane-departure warning – blat-blat-blat! – and I said, “Whoops,” and steered to the left.

Some of the roads were crowned, with lateral sloping toward the right to aid water drainage, which explained some of the rightward drift. Setting the bias to the lane’s right was worse but biasing to the left worked best.

That the lane-keep function is not fully automatic was a little frustrating, and I thought, why not? It’d make a trip more pleasant because I could relax, sight-see, twiddle my thumbs, check my email and text messages, glance through my copy of Land Line, or grab a cat nap. But, while underway, most of those things are illegal and dangerous, which is why designers set up the system so I had to keep at least one hand on the wheel and both if hand pressure wasn’t sufficient. That also forced me to see what was happening on the road ahead.

Otherwise, I expected the 57X to be a pleasure to drive and it was. It had a Detroit DD16 diesel rated at 560 hp and 2,050 pounds-feet of torque, working through a 12-speed Detroit DT12 automated manual transmission that shifted smoothly and competently. The Meritor rear axles sat on an Airliner air suspension, and most road shock that got past them was absorbed by air-ride seats.

A Detroit steer axle guided by a Bosch Servotwin electro-hydraulic power steering system provided decent road feel.Of course, there was lots of room in the new cab and good outward visibility on this sunny day. By the way, a Freightliner customer wanting to upgrade from a Cascadia might be steered toward the 57X at Freightliner-Western Star dealers. It’d be a worthy choice. LL