From the post-war period, up until the later 1950’s, coach builders and manufacturers in the UK were enthused with curves – bus design incorporated semi-elliptical and elliptical shapes along the sides, the roof, even the front. Some designs didn’t wear this curvy look well – others were fairly distinctive. This AEC Regal IV chassis with a Seagull body by Burlingham I thought fell into the latter group.
Above are several examples of curvy post-war UK buses…
AEC, or Associated Equipment Company, was a prolific manufacturer of mostly urban transit buses in the UK from 1909 to 1979. Their most famous product was the iconic Routemaster double decker – the classic red London Bus. But the company also made single floor models – and the Regal was one of its most popular.
Bedford Val with Plaxton Panorama Coachwork
While still true today, the UK in the post-war period was chock full of coach builders – Duple, Plaxton, and Thomas Harrington were some of the more widely known. These coach builders would take a basic chassis procured from a manufacturer and fit it with a body that best met the customer’s operational requirements and/or aesthetic desires. Fellow CC Contributor and good friend Roger Carr said it best – during this period you had to use two names to accurately identify a UK coach.
The Regal IV was made from 1949 to 1960 – and would typically seat 41 passengers. Length was a touch over nine meters and width 2.2. It was somewhat unique in that it had an underfloor, mid-mounted “lay-down” engine – an AEC 9.6-litre AH590 in-line diesel six cylinder with 120 hp an 430 ft lbs of torque. This engine in a vertical orientation was also used in the Routemaster. Quick note on photo above – this coach was likely used to transport US military children from their off-base homes to on-base schools – DODDS stands for Dept of Defense Dependent Schools.
With an initial glance, one wonders if the floor and seats curved in an elliptical fashion, matching the windows – they didn’t, the floor remained mostly flat.
The Regal came with coachwork by other builders, some being much more traditional.
The Burlingham Seagull body could also go over a Leyland chassis – this being a late 50’s Leyland Tiger Cub.
In 1994, the Burlingham Seagull body came in second in the Classic Bus reader poll to find the most attractive UK coach body style of all time. Obviously, appearance is a matter of taste, but this coach certainly was both popular and distinctive – I like it.
All the glories of England, here combined in sponge layer cake of orange and creamy oddness.
The side, in orange, a chromed 2D outline of Seagrave’s Sunbeam LSR record holder. At the lower front, an early Commer van, on top of which sits – having quashed the Commer – a gigantic Mr Toad, staring balefully forth. The four front (or is it rear?) windows – and whyever not four when two or even one have worked so well – are from the finest British train carriages in service (albeit on the sides of the same). And the curve all along is a shrugging, polite apology for being in the way of everyone else.
There’s a lot of people in little Britain, but when it came to coachbuilding, they never seemed to be able to co-ordinate a meeting, the result often apparently being that a number of potentially promising but divergent ideas arrived as the blueprints for some long-suffering workshop manager to try and meld.
There is this: we got these AEC Regals here too, but with a more rational and much duller body that was just The Bus after school.
As a little kid, incidentally, I recall these being very noisy, what with all of us atop the throbbing 120hp, and that the air-powered Wilson pre-selector boxes being jerky enough to make even Steven the Maniac from Grade 5 throw up eventually.
Informative and entertaining comments as always Justy. I did read where the underfloor engine was very noisy and the pneumatic pre-selector transmission not the smoothest. Jim.
Great profile as always Jim. It has some nice lines, but I find it too tall, narrow, and slab-sided looking to be considered one of the more attractive coach designs from this era. A styling drawback, given it was designed for narrow roadways. Better known designs from this period like the Flxible Clipper adapted streamlining and a more integrated overall shape more successfully.
Just how big was the bus market in the UK in that era? It seems like they had dozens of bus models and body builders, how many units was considered a good run?
That’s a great question – and one I can’t answer. Perhaps some of our UK readers can. It’s somewhat difficult to define as what do you count – the basic chassis or the coachwork that went over multiple chassis? Jim.
I’ve got a late 1950s ‘abc’ book on buses and coaches that lists 13 manufacturers of ‘full-size’ bus/coach chassis and 13 builders of coach bodies. At that time Duple would have been the biggest coach body builder; hard to find overall numbers but they were turning out about 500 a year of their most popular model (Vega body, most on Bedford SB chassis).
Regarding the multiple front windows – curved glass was difficult and/or expensive to make in those early days so it was probably easier and/or cheaper to divide those big panels into mutiple. In fact you see the same body in a later pic with just two windows. Later built?
Fantastic shapes, these buses. So much more lovely than our current awful big rectangular blocks.
Very curved glass screens became more widely available in the late 1950s and Duple adopted them in late 1958. This is the 1961 revised version:
The later bus (and it is a bus, judging by the destination blind etc) has just one pane each side, but still clearly flat. The twin pane versions may have openable in an English summer, as would be the side windows.
Very pretty and very “British”. The detailing on these is superb, makes riding a bus much more special than it could be otherwise.
Keep in mind that while Britain had a large car-building industry at the time, that didn’t mean that every household had two of them (or even one). Trains and buses were the primary means of transport for many (or a combination of the two), even for holiday journeys sometimes.
They’re a bit overdone, but I’ve always had a soft spot for these curvy old Brit buses. I’ve seen a lot of the in the many British tv shows we’ve watched over the decades. Very distinctive and…slow.
UK-built rolling bus chassis did very well here in the first decades after WW2, especially AEC and Leyland. Mostly they got a body made by one of our many independent coachbuilders. An example below: 1960 AEC Regal Mk IV-C public transport bus with a Roset body.
Then DAF started to offer a whole line of rolling bus chassis, initially with UK diesel engines before they started to build their own (Leyland based) diesels in the late fifties. As time went by, the guys from Eindhoven became the preferred underpinnings supplier more and more, both for public transport buses and for coaches.
Keep them coming Jim!
Such a beautiful bus. There’s something about the curves, the deep windows letting all the sunlight in, and that beautiful polished detailing, that just makes this soul emit a pleased “Ahhhh…”
I look further, and realise all the curved front and rear panelling would have meant some craftsman spent hours hunched over an English wheel, turning out pieces one at a time. For the volumes produced it would hardly have been cost-effective to invest in press tools, but maybe…. The craftsman stands, stretches, running a gnarled hand over an aching lower back. He turns, smiles, and says “Thanks for the press, mate!”, but there’s a tear in his eye, for he knows the workmanship will never be the same. Nor the worker’s pride…
Then there’s all that stainless detailing, accenting the curves without being overdone. Harley Earl should have abased himself and sat at the feet of this master.
To think a postwar austerity-era Britain could still produce such beauty as this, and find a market for it. it can’t have been such a bad place after all. For some.
And in one of my favourite colour combinations too! (Okay, I’m stretching with the photo, a Delage, but the colours!) Pure Sunday morning bliss.
“Roll up for the Mystery Tour..”
The Dodds coach was run by the Dodds family of Troon in Ayrshire, Scotland. Dodds was therefore not as suggested in your text with picture.
Does anyone have contact details for this Burlington Seagull coach please?