Leyland Leopard

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A Leyland Leopard coach with Plaxton Supreme IV coach bodywork belonging to the fleet of Pennine of Skipton. It was new to Marfleet's Coaches of Binbrook in 1981 as BTL 485X.

The Leyland Leopard was a mid-engined single-deck bus and coach chassis built by Leyland between 1959 and 1982. It was popular with bus and coach operators throughout the British Isles. It was developed from the Leyland Tiger Cub, one of the most important changes being the introduction of the larger and more powerful O.600 engine (later-built Leopards were fitted with the 11.1-litre O.680 engine).

In Scotland, many were bought by subsidiaries of the Scottish Bus Group and were mostly bodied by Alexanders with the Y type body, as both buses and coaches. The Irish company CIÉ also bought a substantial fleet, as did its Northern Irish counterpart the UTA and its successor Ulsterbus.

In England, BET Group subsidiaries were major customers for Leopards. For buses and dual-purpose vehicles, a BET standard design of bodywork was produced, primarily by Marshall and Willowbrook but also to a lesser extent by Weymann and Metro-Cammell. Another major English customer for the Leyland Leopard was Barton Transport of Chilwell near Nottingham, which built up a fleet of 200 with Plaxton Elite and Supreme coach bodywork. Unusually for a large operator, Barton standardised on this type of vehicle for all types of work including local stage carriage services; for this reason, all were fitted with a wide two-piece door, known as an "express" or a "grant" door. The latter term refers to the New Bus Grant, whereby the British Government paid part of the cost of a new bus providing it met certain specifications and spent a prescribed proportion of its time on local service work. Many other operators took advantage of this and bought Leopards built to the grant specification.

Leyland Leopards also saw use with the British Military, and were exported to many other countries. Although the vast majority were used as buses or coaches, a few were bodied as pantechnicons, and at least one as a car transporter.

The Leyland Leopard's major direct competitor throughout most of its life was the AEC Reliance, even though AEC was a subsidiary of Leyland for a large proportion of that time. In the 1970s, the Volvo B58 became a serious competitor. There was also some competition for the Leopard from lighter weight chassis such as the Bedford VAL and Y-series.

The Leopard was superseded by the Leyland Tiger.

[edit] Bodywork

The following coachbuilders produced bus or coach bodywork for the Leyland Leopard. The list includes companies which bodied only a small number of chassis (in some cases, just one).