cav551:
ramone:
So who was the flagship bus manufacturer when we had a say in things.Who made the best all round buses in Britain?That will possibly end up being biased upon regional loyalties. North West Leyland, Midlands Guy or Daimler, South East AEC, South Dennis, West Bristol, North East more difficult, Scotland Albion. If you count volume only, then it’s a toss up between Leyland Motors and AEC both of whom made their own in-house bodies. Export sales would add Guy. All of that is only concentrating on double deckers, the sheer volume of Bedford coaches and single deckers puts them in the picture.
If you were to ask the various bus companies and Corporations, then some were territorial, Salford and Manchester favouring Crossley from Gorton, others switching allegiance quite regularly.
In the final analysis it probably come down to a straight choice between the perceived ‘southern sophisticate’ AEC and Leyland Motors’ advertising spiel ‘the builder of London’s Buses’.
The PSV market can be classified in identical manner to the lorry market, that is premium builders and volume producers. Firmly in the first category are Leyland and AEC, the dominant two, who also built large quantities of chassis. Also in the premium category come Daimler, Bristol, Crossley, Dennis, and Guy, but whose build numbers were far smaller than Leyland and AEC. The volume producers were Bedford and Ford. Atkinson and Foden as we have seen also dabbled in PSV production, as did Seddon. The genesis of the dominant two was completely different. Leyland evolved from steam waggons to IC powered lorries to PSVs, albeit in a few years. AEC started as a bus builder for London General Omnibus Co. and went on to produce lorries, prompted by the demands of the War Office in WW1.