Buses, coaches, & lorries

ParkRoyal2100:
Some years ago (31 years ago, to be precise) I - a fairly newly-arrived backpacking Pommie in Oz on a short “working holiday” visa - got a job with a removals mob in Mascot (a southern suburb of Sydney, not a suitcase throw from Kingsford-Smith airport aka Sydney International). I regularly took either the 309 or the 310 service from Central Stn on a UTA (later STA) on one of these:

youtube.com/watch?v=ecobfR98Pco

Being a Pom, the noise it made was instantly familiar (an 0.600 Leyland) even if its coachwork looked… odd.

Footnote: at the time (1988) I had no reason to suspect that Sydney’s UTA (Urban Transit Authority, later STA, succeeded by Sydney Buses) had been one of Leyland (Truck & Bus) biggest overseas clients, having ordered north of 700 Leopard bus chassis. That Sydney UTA was, at the time, phasing in M-B O305s on almost every route is testament to Leyland’s obstinacy in offering only the O.500 engined National to its hitherto reliable export markets.

Obstinacy was not confined to the Brits. On a flight home via Riyadh in about 1982, I sat next to an American guy who worked for the newly formed Riyadh bus company (I’m sure it wasn’t called that, but that’s what it was.) he said that they needed several hundred new buses to provide services in the rapidly expanding city.

He said that a Dutch company (I think it was Van Hool, but I could be wrong, it’s a long time ago) shipped out several single deckers and gave them to the company to trial for a month. Leyland had shipped one single decker (I wasn’t really into buses, but I’m sure it was one of those that they built in Workington, whose name I can’t remember.) they parked it in Riyadh near the hotel where the representatives were staying and invited the bus company people to come and look at it. I put my head in my hands and said ‘oh no!’

‘Ah, that’s not the worst. What the Americans did was send the bus company brochures for the yellow school buses that you see all over the States, and asked how many we wanted to order.’

Not only did the Dutch company win the Riyadh order, but we soon started seeing their buses in Dammam.

I may be slightly wrong on detail, it is nearly 40 years ago, but careless marketing led to Britain losing a lot of business in traditional markets.

John.