PAST & PRESENT
We look back 50 and 56 years to two rear-engined single-deckers exhibited outside the industry’s major exhibition of the time, promising looking models that did not live up to their manufacturers’ hopes of volume sales, and at a Plaxton demonstrator on display at the last Euro Bus Expo four years ago
Euro Bus Expo is the coach and bus equivalent of the biennial Commercial Motor Show held at Earls Court in London until 1976, an event open to the general public, with passenger-carrying vehicles displayed alongside trucks and vans.
Iain MacGregor’s pictures from 1966 and 1972 were taken in the outdoor demonstration area, showing two rearengined single-deckers promoted then with high hopes of success.
Leyland’s 33ft 5in (10m) Panther Cub was a low-frame design for urban operators converting services to one-person operation. It was a shorter counterpart of the 36ft (11m) Panther, with a horizontal O.400 engine in place of the Panther’s larger O.600 or O.680. Both were launched in 1964.
Demonstrator YTB 771D, displayed outside Earls Court in 1966, had a 43- seat dual-door body built by Strachans at Hamble in Hampshire. Eastbourne Corporation bought it but no more. Strachans bodied thre…
