Fodens — its products identified by a kite-shaped badge — teamed up with with Northern Counties 40 years ago to produce the Foden- NC double-decker. ALAN MILLAR relates its story, as the second of only two preserved survivors returns to operational condition.
Of all the new double-deckers launched in the 1970s to challenge Leyland’s dominance of the market, the Foden-NC was by far the least successful. Just eight were built and only seven were supplied between June 1976 and July 1978 for trials with six operators. Despite hopes of at least one order, it never made it into series production.
By those measures, it was a failure, but its significance extends beyond those disappointing numbers. Two surviving examples stand as monuments to a wider struggle by operators, bodybuilders and rival chassis makers to resist a Leyland monopoly that threatened to limit the choice of products available 40 years ago.
It was a struggle that Leyland’s customers and competitors won. Leyland is no more, a victim of a great many factors that must include its arrogance in assuming in the 1970s that it could dictate what its customers would buy. Nor does either of the companies behind the Foden-NC survive today. But this bu…
