The Leyland Olympian in the USA and Canada

OLYMPIAN ODYSSEY – PAVING THE WAY FOR A DOUBLE DECK REVOLUTION

This is the story of how in the 1980s I attempted to create a market for the Leyland Olympian double deck bus in the USA and Canada. It was hard work; it was a lot of fun; and it nearly came off.

I suppose it’s because we didn’t have a car when I was growing up, and so most of our road journeys were by bus, that I went to Leyland with dreams of being a bus designer. When I joined in 1972 Leyland was one of the world’s biggest makers of lorries and buses and a major exporter. In 1976 I was working in the bus design office and somehow convinced my bosses that it would be an interesting idea for me to go to the United States for seven weeks to learn a great deal more about American bus design and operation. Equally remarkably, I persuaded the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the National Bus Company and the Confederation for British Road Passenger Transport to give me around £1,000 for the trip, while Leyland were good for the air fares.

Let’s be honest: I had always wanted to see America and getting other people to pay for it whilst I was doing something I really enjoyed was a pretty smart way to go about it. I visited transit properties (as city bus operators are called), manufacturers, consultants, industry groups and government agencies. A couple of years later I made a personal trip staying with the wonderful family of a transport consultant I became friends with the first time, and accumulated more knowledge. The product of these trips was a report for Leyland on the state and direction of the American bus market, and a series of presentations and another report for my benefactors. The upshot was that I probably knew more about the contemporary North American bus scene than anyone else in Britain in 1979.

UMTA and the Superbus programme

In the 1970s there was a lot going on Stateside. The Urban Mass Transportation Administration was pumping a lot of government money into improving public transport. The Transbus programme delivered a fleet of very advanced low floor prototypes, which prompted domestic bus builders to significantly improve their legacy products – creating the so-called Advanced Design Bus.

The Superbus initiative examined the potential for larger buses – specifically articulated buses and double-deckers. As part of this, Leyland had delivered a fleet of eight air-conditioned Atlanteans to New York City in 1976 for evaluation in daily service. Los Angeles had taken two German Neoplan Skyliners in 1975 and added 20 more in 1981. By contrast, after a series of trials of articulated buses by cities like Seattle, another German firm – MAN – managed to sell almost 400 examples through a joint venture with AM General by the end of the decade.

A Leyland single deck concept for America

Although selling buses into the American market (especially the public sector) was and remains complex, a number of foreign manufacturers saw the appetite for innovation and public investment and thought it was worth a shot, especially as there was a push from UMTA for true low floor buses that the likes of General Motors were resisting. Transit Bus Manufacturers’ Profiles The UK Department of Transport had heard in 1980 that the Americans were keen to explore alternatives and approached Leyland.

Given my knowledge of the US market, I was asked to undertake a little exercise to consider what type of vehicle we might offer. I proposed a stretched single deck version of the new Leyland Olympian, in the 40 foot long, transverse rear engine layout format that was the American standard. Nothing came of it.

By the early eighties Leyland had seen many of its traditional export markets decline and needed new prospects. In spring 1982 I was finishing a project to build a battery-electric-powered 7.5 tonne lorry, and was ready for a new challenge. When I heard the company had decided to have a serious go at establishing a market in North America, I put my hand up – and within a couple of weeks they were printing my Market Development Manager – North America business cards.

US bus market research

In April I flew off to San Francisco to speak at a conference and start building up my contacts. The eight New York Leylands had proved troublesome on the Big Apple’s mean streets and were retired in 1980 and bought by Grosvenor Bus Lines of San Francisco – who had the local Gray Line franchise. Repainted all-over Gray Line red, they augmented the fleet of three axle single-deck coaches running sightseeing trips. The boss of GBL was Bob Werbe, a delightful man and a total Anglophile. He so wanted to have a fleet of high-capacity red British double-deckers. Wisely, he had recruited a Leyland-trained engineer as his technical chief. I rekindled my association with Gillig over the bay in Oakland, whom I had visited in 1977. Gillig was a newcomer to the transit market (although a well-established firm), just introducing its promising Phantom single decker. It had experience of working with foreign firms having had an association with Neoplan to assemble and sell a midi-bus.

After plenty of preparation the main field-based market research effort took place in August (west coast), September (east coast) and November (mid-west). Its objectives were to establish what type or types of bus to sell and in what market segments (transit, inter-city, etc.); work out how to convince local customers to buy those buses; identify who could be the ideal business partners, as selling and supporting buses independently would be extremely difficult; and properly understand the regulatory and legal environment.

The research yielded significant conclusions. Whilst the attractions of high-capacity buses were recognised in the right applications, articulated buses were heavy, complicated, thirsty and not especially reliable. Technology of Articulated Transit Buses Articulated Bus Report Operators west of the Mississippi were more innovative than those to the east, and had fewer infrastructure height restrictions. Going head-on against the local manufacturers and overseas firms like Scania and Volvo in the single-deck arena would be a high-risk endeavour. Customers would only be willing to buy any new bus after they had had a decent opportunity to try it out in real service.

My hunch was the most logical type of bus for Leyland to market would be the Olympian double-decker for the USA and Canada. As although the market for ‘deckers might not be enormous, there appeared to be the potential for sales of several hundred a year in a part of the market where Leyland would face little competition. From a list of five potential firms who were keen to be partners, Gillig was selected as they could both assemble buses and exploit an existing nationwide service network.

In 1983 the approach began to crystallise. Gillig would lead the marketing effort. Leyland would provide a demonstrator bus for potential customers to try out. Initial production would be in Britain, but Gillig would rapidly build up the capability to build complete Olympians in California from a combination of British and American-sourced components. They were confident enough to suggest that eventually ten per cent of the American transit and tours market might be double-deck.

I made further trips (sometimes with Leyland colleagues) to generate interest, in places like Denver, Portland, Sacramento and Seattle. Gillig executives made a series of visits to build closer links with Leyland’s marketing and engineering teams in the UK.

The Leyland Olympian demonstrator – working with Gillig

The demonstrator was a two-axle Olympian chassis, built in Workington, fitted with a 68-seat body built by Eastern Coach Works in Lowestoft. I worked with the designers from early 1984 to ensure the bus would meet American requirements (like marker lights on the front and rear roof domes), and shuttled up and down to ECW as the vehicle came together. The body was particularly complex as it was fitted with a Stone air-conditioning system powered by an independent Perkins diesel engine. A Cummins L10 main engine was fitted, driving a Leyland Hydracyclic fully-automatic transmission. The seats were supplied free by the American Seating Company – those downstairs sporting a fabric that had more than a hint of London Transport about it.

By August 1984 the demonstrator was ready to cross the Atlantic, in time to be put on show at the International Mass Transit Association conference and exhibition in Washington DC that October. This was quite an affair; the British embassy even laid on a little party. Afterwards it came back to the UK for further development and acquired a new builder’s plate – indicating it was constructed in 1985, not 1984. Why? I don’t know.

To reassure operators that double-deckers are as durable and safe as any other kind of bus, we took the Olympian to various test sites. It endured the hot and cold chamber at Leyland’s own technical centre, and undertook brake tests at the Motor Industry Research Association near Nuneaton. The most dramatic test was a run into the famous skid-pan at London Transport’s works at Chiswick. A number of volunteers were involved in queuing exercises a short distance away and there were aghast expressions on our faces when the throttle jammed on the Olympian and the driver only managed to bring it under control with yards to spare!

After several months the Olympian was shipped to San Francisco in March 1985 and readied by Gillig for city-by-city demonstrations. It was then tried out at a number of transit properties, supported in the field by a hugely experienced Leyland export service engineer. They certainly included Austin, Cleveland, Dallas, Long Beach and San Diego. Dallas would only try out the bus if it was painted in the colours of Dallas Area Rapid Transit, and it definitely looked the part for the park and ride express work it was put to.

The opportunity was taken to showcase it at Vancouver’s Expo 86 between May and October 1986. There it provided a shuttle service for visitors, between the city centre and the showgrounds. It might have been the only bus British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ever rode on during her tenure in 10 Downing Street, when she came to visit (on Concorde, naturally). When the exposition closed the Olympian was purchased by Gray Line of Victoria, BC, presumably joining the ex-New York Atlanteans. It carried fleet number 170 and even appeared in the firm’s marketing materials.

The Gray Line Olympians

Turning back to 1984 conversations continued with Grosvenor Bus Lines. Bob Werbe was aware that the Olympian could be built as a three-axle variant and was being sold as such in Hong Kong – a vital market for Leyland. In April 1984 he declared he would like four sightseeing coaches, and so began an extended period of tough but friendly negotiations, which eventually led to GBL ordering ten three-axle Olympians. Thanks to the weak pound sterling dropping to parity with the US dollar he got a fantastically good deal.

I kept up my trips to the United States, sealing the deal with Gray Line in September 1984 and speaking at conferences. My British accent was always well-received.

Production of the Gray Line Olympians hit delays, which was unfortunate because they were not ready for the 1986 summer season as promised. However, they eventually arrived and began work, proving both popular and reliable. They too had Cummins engines but were fitted with Voith transmissions. Their delivery hit the UK trade press: https://archive.commercialmotor.com/article/14th-june-1986/20/-the-first-of-10-leyland-olympian-three-axle-doubl

Leyland loses interest in North America

Around this time things were getting very difficult for Leyland. Bus service deregulation (essentially privatisation of most bus operators) had injected huge uncertainty into Leyland’s biggest market and orders collapsed. Leyland Bus had been split off as a self-contained subsidiary of BL (British Leyland) in 1981 and now its very existence was in the balance. I had been re-assigned to do market research on the expected impact of deregulation (pretty dreadful) and contribute to a make or break bid to re-equip the bus operation in Bangkok, Thailand (which project the Thais abandoned). Given the way things were going I left, took an MBA, and set out in an entirely different career direction which kept me out of mischief for eighteen years.

There was no breakthrough in winning more sales of Olympians in North America whether for transit or sightseeing applications. The arrangement with Gillig was quietly dissolved. What would happen to the demonstrator? Whether it was sold to Gillig for a pittance I do not know. But as we have seen, it did wind up with Gray Line of Victoria, BC, towards the end of 1986.

A vintage-style bus concept for Gray Line

I might have left Leyland but I couldn’t get buses out of my system. I maintained cordial contact with GBL and in 1992 Bob Werbe asked me to look into the feasibility of building a fleet of double deck sightseeing coaches, possibly with a deliberately vintage look. There was already a market in the US for buses built to look like old-fashioned trolley cars, but these were not especially large. He foresaw that Gray Line of San Francisco could soon have an entirely double-deck fleet.

My work involved a certain amount of moonlighting and subterfuge but I managed to create a proposal and even give a presentation to three Gray Line franchisees in Washington DC in November 1993. I talked to several manufacturers in the UK (Leyland no longer being an option), and even visited Van Hool in Belgium. Despite some initial enthusiasm, none of them pursued the opportunity and so the idea flopped. However, I did get the chance to catch up with the Gray Line Olympians when I was in San Francisco on business in 1995, and later while on holiday in 2000.

The Gray Line Olympians’ have later careers in the USA

Accounts of the further adventures of the eleven Olympians are a bit sketchy, so what follows may not be completely accurate. Corrections welcome!

The Gray Line fleet stayed in San Francisco for around fifteen years and was then split up. Three went up to Gray Line in Seattle. Two of them were converted to open-toppers. They lasted on sightseeing tours until at least 2012 and so gave over a quarter of a century of service.

The remaining seven went over to Gray Line in New York in 1999. As in other cities, hop on and off sightseeing was a growing market and was generally provided by imported second-hand British double-deckers. London Routemasters had a quaint vintage feel, low-height Bristol Lodekkas avoided some of the bridge clearance issues, but increasingly ordinary Atlanteans and Fleetlines were employed. The big drawback of all these buses was that they were right-hand-drive, so driving them was awkward and the passenger doorway had to be relocated. The Gray Line Olympians – all of which were converted to open-top – showed that the practical way forward in America’s tourism capital was left-hand-drive with three axles. Six were definitely put into service; the fate of the other one (ex Gray Line 605) is unknown.

The demonstrator stays in Canada

As for the demonstrator, it only stayed in Victoria BC for a couple of years. Despite vintage (and not so vintage) double deckers being a fixture of the city, Gray Line had trouble getting authorisation to run the bus there and looked around for a buyer.

Brampton is a satellite city north west of Toronto, and the management of Brampton Transit – its bus operator – were quite go ahead in their thinking. They thought a distinctive bus could be a useful promotional tool. The Olympian looked perfect, negotiations with Gray Line ensued and a deal was struck late in 1988.

It made the journey east wrapped up like a huge Christmas present, on a Canadian Pacific railway wagon, in the depths of winter. It arrived in the Etobicoke yard west of Toronto in January 1989. It was numbered 8500 in the Brampton fleet (a rather large number considering they only had about 45 buses at the time, but actually reflecting its production year). Following a service and a paint job, it hit the streets in March 1989 on route 1B.

The range of operation was obviously limited by its height, but also its fuel tank capacity – which limited it to 13 hours of service each day. Even so, Brampton Transit officials were very positive about the potential of the Olympian. In September 1989 they approached Leyland to talk about becoming importers. However, bus service deregulation had indeed had a dreadful impact on Leyland Bus, and the initiative went nowhere.

The Olympian’s driving characteristics were very different to those of native North American buses like the GMC New Look. It demanded a firmness of touch on the brakes that was at odds with the more responsive style drivers were used to. As a result, brake problems were a persistent headache. Until the brake system was modified, the Ontario Ministry of Labour restricted driver shifts on the bus to just two hours. Once the fix was in place, 8500 actually became a popular assignment for drivers.

There were a few modifications to the bus during its stay. Fairly early on the Leyland Hydracyclic transmission was replaced. It was completely rewired in 1996. During 1999 the rear light clusters were superseded by an array with red turn signals. That year a North American style parking brake control was fitted. The original Vultron dot matrix destination display proved difficult to reprogramme. So it was replaced in 2000 with a more modern Luminator unit taken from a retired Toronto bus. At some point the driver’s windscreen with a ventilating flap at the bottom was replaced with a one-piece unit. 8500 was the first air conditioned bus to join the fleet, but the system did not prove especially temperamental.

The vehicle got into a few scrapes, but not from running into low bridges. Its nemesis seems to have been the bus garage where it suffered at least three prangs. On one occasion a service technician accidentally drove through a brick wall. Another time, the inevitable happened when someone drove it into a shed only high enough for single deckers. And again, when it was damaged in the height-restricted wash bay. That last time saw structural deflection three bays down the upper deck. Thankfully, the body’s simple construction made it easy to repair. One casualty of these misadventures was the cutting down of the front destination display to a single element, without a separate route number panel.

Over time, its increasingly patchy reliability, and the growing interference by the Ministry of Transportation Ontario (MTO), meant 8500’s scope of work narrowed from fairly regular route service towards charters and special events. For example, when the UITP held its convention in Toronto in 1999, it was among the local buses on display.

The MTO was increasingly concerned about the height of the bus, and the risk it might stray into area where hitting an overpass or similar obstruction could lead to a nasty accident. Over time the bus was restricted only to nominated routes outside Brampton, ultimately being limited to designated roads within the city boundaries and no further. There was also a requirement to fit a low-height proximity warning device, and carry a set of permissible detour routings in case of road blockages.

The Olympian ran its last service route in November 2006 and thereafter was kept in store except for occasional charters and special events. Over time, Brampton’s affection for the bus waned, but it took them a long time to decide to pass it on.

In April 2012, Paul Bateson, a dedicated champion of British buses working abroad who lives in Canada, attempted to buy it for preservation as a very rare example of a left-hand-drive Olympian. Insurance costs defeated him, and it passed to Double Deck Tours of Niagara, where the roof was eventually removed and it became an open-topper.

Alas, tourists there preferred riding on old Routemasters and so in May 2016 it moved on to Bus and Boat Tours of Toronto who run the City Sightseeing Toronto operation. It began work around the city, first in a fetching bright red livery and later with an all over advertising wrap for a suburban shopping mall that didn’t flatter its lines at all.

It was retired in 2018 as a fleet of larger Van Hool double-deckers was built up. Today it sits at the back of a yard in an industrial area of Toronto close to Lake Ontario, where I visited it on 26 May 2025, thanks to the generosity of Chris and Jason at BBT. It seemed in good shape for all its years. Yes, it was being used to store stuff, but under the bits and pieces the interior looked smart and the American Seating fabric still looked fresh. I sat in the cab and reflected. I don’t think my Leyland Olympian will hit the streets again – but at least it’s still around and it was a privilege to be able to see it.

British-designed double deck buses in North America today

However, it was a pioneer, and along with the Gray Line Olympians I think it began a process that today sees well over a thousand British-designed double-deckers operating across North America. That process began in 2000, when BC Transit in Victoria BC took delivery of ten Alexander-Dennis Limited three-axle transit buses, and now it has almost 70. Gray Line in New York bought 30 ADL open-toppers the following year, in order to enhance the quality of its service and get rid of the last of the British old-timers. As demand grew, ADL forged joint ventures to build its vehicles in-country, and in 2019 it was taken over by NFI Group of Winnipeg in Canada, the makers of New Flyer buses and MCI coaches. Home | Alexander Dennis The double-decker now has a solid place in the North American bus landscape – my hunch was right, but my timing… well, if Leyland hadn’t disappeared, who knows how things might have played out.

For more photographs about this story, click here. Olympian odyssey – bonus pictures – Zavanak

Sources: Most of the source material comes from documents I kept from my time at Leyland. The CPTDB Wiki website provides a terrific amount of detail about current and historic bus and coach fleets. It also contains lots of fine photographs. Paul Bateson has been extraordinarily helpful in explaining the demonstrator’s time in Canada and providing photographs. His https://busesworldwide.org/wp/ site is well worth a visit. Thanks as ever to Basil Hancock for rare photographs from Leyland Bus. Buses Annual 1967 told the story of the London Transport promotional trip in 1952, covered here in the bonus pictures section.