Cougar's light on its feet
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• It is now more than two months since Huddersfieldbased Alternative Chassis Engineering unveiled its Cougar single-deck bus chassis at the Expo Coach 90 show at Donnington. We have driven the 43-seat Wadham Stringer Portsdown-bodied prototype which was displayed at Expo Coach 90 and is now in service with People's Provincial in Hampshire.
The Cougar chassis is in tended to fill the gap between the latest generation of longwheelbase minis and full-length single-deckers such as the Optare Delta and Leyland Lynx. It comes with either a 134kW (180hp) or 157kW (210hp) Perkins Phaser engine driving via an Allison fourspeed auto box and 10.2 or 11.8m bodywork from Wadham or Willowbrook (CM 1-7 November).
Passenger access to the Portsdownbodied Cougar 5 is easy, thanks to its low entrance. The 490mmhigh slightly sloping saloon floor has no steps or obstructions, and the hand rails and stanchions are wellpositioned.
Despite carrying a test load equivalent to its full coin plement of 43 passengers, the 134kW People's Cougar had tittle trouble in keeping up with the traffic on the twisting, hilly route chosen around ACE's Huddersfield plant.
Visibility from the driver's raised control platform is good.
As the Portsdown body is only 2.35m wide the Cougar offers good access to housing estates and rural areas: even on narrow roads it was not necessary for us to pull in to let oncoming vehicles pass.
The Phaser engine works well with the Allison box. With a 4.88:1 back axle the Cougar has a top speed of 94kinth (59mph), although on rural roads we spent a fair amount of time in either second or third gear, dropping down to first only for a short period while climbing a 20% (1:5) hill on the way to Jackson Bridge.
Over our 42km hilly route the Cougar had no problems keeping up with any schedule and even gained time on certain sections, while returning an average fuel consumption of 43.5ht/100km (6. 49mpg).