Bus Wheelbases : An Informative Survey.
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WE are indebted to our American contemporary Automobile Topics for the accompanying interesting diagram, which strikingly depicts the great increase that has taken place In recent years in the length of wheelbases of motorbuses in use in the United States. With the object of making buses more comfortable and more suitable for employment on long journeys, in place of or supplementary to rail transportation, it became apparent to American. makers that larger units would be needed.
The only way that this could be economically and efficiently accomplished was by building long wheelbase chassis designed especially to carry bodies of comparatively large seating capacity. The extent to which this has been carried out is indiated by the diagram, in which the dotted sections represent the percentage of buses with a wheelbase of less than 12 ft. 6 ins., the striped sections those with wheelbases between 12 ft. 6 ins. and 16 ft. 7 ins., and the solid sections those with a wheelbase of from 16 ft. 8 ins. to 21 ft. 3 ins.
In 1922 only 3.3 per cent, of the bus models on the American market were in the third category, whilst the bulk, or 51 per cent., were of the medium size and measured from 12 ft. 6 ins. to 16 ft. 7 ins, from the centre of each axle. There was but a slight change in the following year, but in 1924 the.
demand for longer and larger buses became pronounced and the small units started to full in popularity, the gains being shared between the medium and large models.
The movement in favour of buses with longer wheelbases has won ground, and in the last three years not only has the demand for small liuseF been much less, but the medium-length vehicles have given way to the large units, 53 per cent. of the bus models now having wheelbases longer than 16 ft. 8 ins., 40 per cent. being in the middle class, and only 7 per cent with wheelbases of under 12 ft. 6 ins.