The Leyland-MCW Olympic was an underfloor-engined single-deck bus manufactured for at least eighteen countries from 1949 to 1971. 3,564 Olympics were built at four factories (three in the UK, one in South Africa) from 1949 to 1971, with 1,299 Olympics (36%) built as right hand drive and 2,265 (64%) as left hand drive. It was a very durable heavy-duty bus which ran in arduous conditions for longer periods than ever envisaged by its designers.
History In 1948, the first post-war Olympic Games were held in London. At the same time, Leyland Motors were working on a horizontally orientated version of their recently announced O.600 9.8-litre diesel engine. Leyland were not new to this design concept, the pre-war 8.6-litre engine was used in horizontal orientation for the London Transport TF-class Tiger FEC single-deckers and the sole Leyland Panda but, like the contemporary work of Tilling-Stevens and a slightly later prototype from AEC, such designs were put into abeyance to further the war effort. Initially, the O.600H engine was sold to Scandanvian bus makers, Scania-Vabis of Sweden and Strømmen of Norway but, in exhibiting it at the 1948 Commercial Motor show at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre, Leyland made clear it would soon be available on the home market.
In 1948, Leyland and the MCW sales organisation concluded a twenty-year agreement that they would exclusively collaborate on integral designs and favour one another with body-on-chassis business. Their idea was that an under-frame comprising durable Leyland engines and other mechanical units would be permanently attached to a similarly heavy-duty body structure. This idea became the Leyland-MCW Olympic and was built over three series from 1949.
Description A body frame comprising welded steel tube longitudinals, uprights and diagonals to the waistrail: with heavy duty stress-panels and aluminium upper frame sections riveted thereupon was constructed to a joint design by either Weymann or Metro-Cammell in England or by the MCW group's South African subsidiary Bus Bodies (South Africa) in Port Elizabeth; this was permanently attached to a Leyland under-frame, not drivable unless bodied. To this under-frame, Leyland attached all running units comprising radiator, engine, axles, suspension, steering, gearbox, brakes, controls etc. Once under-frame and body were permanently married up, the frame would be clad in aircraft-grade aluminium and finished.Lamb 2007 The original idea was to offer a bus to one of three specifications: home market, right-hand drive export or left-hand drive export. It would be a stronger bus than any built before. It would be a standard bus for all world markets.Jack p.208
Series One The components in the Olympic under-frame, to be built at Leyland Motors' Farington works, were mainly as in the Tiger PS2 and Titan PD2, except that the radiator was a fabricated unit designed to fit behind the front axle and below the passenger floor, the rear axle was a new spiral-bevel unit.
The variants of the Olympic were as follows: Type Market Driving control Wheelbase Overall length Width Factory* HR40 Home Right 15 ft 7in 27 ft 6in 7 ft 6in W, B ER36 Export Right 15 ft 7in 29 ft 3in 8 ft M EL36 Export Left 15 ft 7in 29 ft 3in 8 ft M EL40 Export Left 17 ft 6in 31 ft 8in 8 ft M ER40 Export Right 17 ft 6in 31 ft 8in 8 ft M, B EL44 Export Left 20 ft 4in 34 ft 6in 8 ft M ER44 Export Right 20 ft 4in 34 ft 6in 8 ft M, B
Factories producing the superstructure were planned as follows: W = Weymanns M = Metropolitan-Cammell All Metro-Cammell bus production was at Elmdon until 1969, when market contraction both for buses and railway carriages led the board of then parent Laird Group to sell the factory and relocate bus building back at the Washwood Heath 'A shop' where the Midland Carriage Works had built its first bus body in 1924. Among the last vehicles built at Elmdon were the two prototype Metro Scania single deckers. The final 115 Olympic EL3A/41 coaches for Cuba were built at Washwood Heath. B = Bus Builders (South Africa)
Options for the HR, following a relaxation of UK dimensional rules in 1950 included greater, nominal 30 ft (9.2m), length, with the same wheelbase, with which models were coded HR44 (for 44 seats) and optional widths, the new UK maximum being 8 ft thus later HR series Olympics had designations such as HR44/90/S if to the previous width or EL44/96/S if 8 ft wide. The HR44 can be distinguished from the HR40 by a slightly longer rear overhang and a flatter panel above the side windows allowing for sign-painted advertisements. Although in the published production records the width suffixes are not used and the relationship between the type number and seats fitted soon becomes very tenuous indeed.
Series Two Leyland announced the Royal Tiger Worldmaster (RT series) in 1954 as the replacement for the Royal Tiger and from about 18 months later the units from it became standard in EL and ER Olympics, around 1956 the series 2 Olympic was announced, this used Worldmaster units, in particular the O.680H diesel engine and the Pneumocylic gearbox and the body styling was revised. Designations were now EL2 or ER2 (home market sales were dropped in 1953).
Lengths and wheelbases were quoted as follows: Ex2/40 (18 ft wheelbase, 33 ft overall length) Ex2/44 (20 ft wheelbase, 35 ft overall length)
Production and sales
Home market A radio celebrity at the time of the Olympic's launch was Professor CEM Joad, whose catchphrase on the BBC programme The Brains Trust was:
"It all depends what you mean by…"
In the case of the HR series Olympic it really did all depend what you meant by home as of the 92 'home' models built in the British Isles 2 were exported (one each to Trinidad and New Zealand) and a further 31 'home' models were built by the South African subsidiary and they exported 11 of them to Rhodesia.
The use of British Isles here is deliberate as 8 'home' Olympics were purchased by the Isle of Man Road Services, and like the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man is not part of the UK.
Four Leyland-owned prototypes/demonstrators were constructed at Metro-Cammell's Elmdon Birmingham works in 1948-9 and registered in 1950–1 with Birmingham Marks KOC233-4, 241–2, these formed 4% of the total production for use in the British Isles. The other 96% were built by Weymann who was meant to supply all of the home market vehicles and none for export but nevertheless exported the two mentioned earlier and provided a fifth Leyland Demonstrator in RPA771. The four KOC registered buses all eventually ended up in service with the Welsh independent Llynfi Motor Services of Maesteg who furnished most of their fleet requirement by buying demonstrators cheaply from major bus manufacturers. RPA771 was purchased by Sheffield Transport for the wholly council-owned A fleet.
The lion's share of 'home' Olympic sales (58%) were to BET group companies. Including the New Zealand and Trinidad buses and the demonstrators the percentage shares were as follows (of 92 buses so rounding errors have occurred):
Ribble Motor Services 30 (33%) Western Welsh 10 (11%) Yorkshire Woollen 10 (11%) North Western 2(2%) James 1 (1%)
Red & White Services had 2 and its subsidiary United Welsh Services had one, these were ordered before the Red & White Group sold its bus interests to the British Transport Commission but delivered afterwards so that the state-sector bought 3% of 'home' Olympics.
The eight sold to the Isle of Man account for 8%.
Municipal buyers were: Birmingham 5 (5%) Sheffield 4 (4%) Edinburgh 1 (1%) Stockton 1 (1%) - This was the last 'home market' Olympic registered and the only one registered in 1952 although the model was offered on home markets for a further year.
The remaining ten buses went to independents: John Fishwick & Sons, Leyland, 8 (8%) Jennings, Ashen, 1 (1%) King Alfred, Winchester 1 (1%)
Already the Leyland-MCW idea of a totally standard bus had been stymied by the width and length changes, and the corporation fleets (whose General Managers and Transport Committee Chairmen were always trying to establish individuality for the sake of civic pride) further muddied the waters, Birmingham's five HR40s sat 36, Edinburgh's sole HR44 had only thirty two seats and an open rear-platform entrance as on contemporary double deckers (and most of the rest of Edinburgh's small single deck fleet). The Stockton bus had front and rear doors and 42 seats. Some of the independent and BET fleets also went for non-standard seating plans, two of Fishwick's and the Jennings bus sat 40 in coach seats whilst Yorkshire Woollen District's second five had 42 bus seats. Still it was nothing to what began to happen elsewhere in the Olympic's complicated production schedule.
Weymann-bodied HR Olympic production ceased in 1951, the Royal Tiger was more to the home market's taste, as (even more so) would be the forthcoming Leyland Tiger Cub.Jack 1984, p. 210 et seq Weymanns did however build all 60 Leyland-MCW Olympians and did finishing and inspection work on MCW-built Olympics until its closure in 1966.
Vehicles built in South Africa Bus Builders (South Africa) of Port Elizabeth, a subsidiary of MCW, assembled 31 Olympics to HR44 pattern in 1951–5. 11 were sold to two operators in Rhodesia, Of the remaining 20 domestic sales 12 went to municipals and eight to independents. Eleven of the South African buses sat 44 and nine sat 45. An illustration in The Leyland Bus shows a South African HR44 differed from the Weymann built version in having full-depth sliding windows and having the emergency exit relocated from the rear face of the bus to the offside, thus having two, rather than three rear windows.
Of the Rhodesian examples the seven for Salisbury United were 45 seaters and the four for Thatcher Hobson of Broken Hill were 56 seaters, (presumably 3+2 and not intended for those with paler skins) these last four were delivered in 1955, but like the rest of the 20 later South African HR Olympics they had 52xxxx numbers, suggesting completion of running units at Farington during 1952, the first 11 of the South African HR44s had 50xxxx numbers. There was one apparent demonstrator, Leyland chassis 504432 whose destiny is unrecorded in the sales lists. 521964 is ascribed to Cape Town but unregistered and without fleet number, maybe it was a set of spare components (Australian municipals did the same). A perhaps pivotal early sale though was of 'chassis' 504812 which went to PUTCO, Johannesburg, part of United Transport, the Red & White Group's colonial arm: Salisbury United were another member of the United Transport group, United Transport later gradually passed into the ownership of BET. PUTCO became the second largest customer for ER series Olympics, taking 174.
From 1951 to 1958, Bus Bodies (South Africa) built 81 ER44 Olympics; none were exported from South Africa. Minimum seating capacity was 45 and the maximum was 67. Municipal users were Bloemfontein (2), Cape Town (8), Durban (15), Port Elizabeth (2) and Pretoria (1). The BET-owned PUTCO bought 32 and independents took fourteen, there were also four examples without initial registrations, presumably demonstrators or dealer stock.
From 1957 to 1971, 479 ER2s were produced at Port Elizabeth, post 1969 models were coded ER2A because they had the BLMC rationalised Pneumocyclic gearbox. Again the maximum seating capacity was 67.