Leyland Atlantean - AN68/AN69

AN68/AN69

In February 1972, Leyland announced the AN68 series to replace the PDR1/PDR2. The new chassis provided a wider entrance and several new safety features were included. An audible and visible alarm discouraged engine overheating by giving the driver due warning. A fail-safe parking brake was introduced, while the steering box and brake controls were protected against damage from severe head-on collision and stainless steel air-piping gave greater resistance to corrosion.

Two models were offered: AN68/1R (9.4m in length) and AN68/2R (10.2m in length). Power assisted steering was standard on the AN68/2R and optional on the AN68/1R. The steering pump was power driven, which replaced the early belt driven system, while the only available engine was the new Leyland O.680. A wide variety of body styles from various manufacturers continued to be offered, allowing the Atlantean to be tailor made to requirements from operators ranging from the small independent to the large city corporation.

In 1978, Leyland started to offer the AN69 with Leyland O.690 (a turbocharged variant of the O.680) engine which was mainly built for export.

The Atlantean continued to sell in large numbers, with many operators proving loyal to it. London Transport (LT), however, notably chose the Daimler (later Leyland) Fleetline over the AN68 for its first large rear-engined double-deck order. Though over 2,000 Fleetlines would be purchased by LT, reliability problems and LT's rigid maintenance system caused their very premature withdrawal.

The creation of British Leyland in 1968 saw rivals Daimler and Bristol merged with Leyland, bringing the two competing rear-engined chassis (Daimler Fleetline and Bristol VR) together with the Atlantean. Though the Bristol brand was retained, Daimler was dropped and products were re-badged as Leylands. After the re-organisation, Leyland set out to develop a new rear-engined double-deck bus for the London market to replace the troublesome Fleetlines. This new vehicle, the Titan B15 spawned a simpler, non-integral offshoot, the Olympian, which debuted in 1980. Though the Olympian was meant as a direct replacement for the VR, Fleetline and Atlantean, the venerable AN68 continued in production alongside the Olympian until 1986. The last Atlantean for the domestic market rolled off the production line in 1984, the last of a batch for Merseyside PTE, while the export version remained in production for a further two years, with deliveries to the city operator in Baghdad, the capital city of Iraq.

By the end of production, over 15,000 Atlanteans had been built. Greater Manchester PTE (and its predecessors) was the largest operator of the Atlantean with 'Greater Manchester Standard' bodies from Northern Counties and, to a lesser extent, Park Royal. Second was Glasgow Corporation/Greater Glasgow PTE most of which were bodied by Walter Alexander. Third was Merseyside PTE who took approximately 800 Atlanteans mostly bodied by Walter Alexander and East Lancs although there were smaller batches with MCW and Willowbrook bodies. Notably, the fourth largest was Singapore Bus Service from Singapore; it had received 520 Leyland Atlantean AN68/2Rs in 1977–86 in three batches with the bodywork provided by Metal Sections/Duple Metsec, British Aluminium Company and Walter Alexander. The Singapore-based Leyland Atlanteans were withdrawn between 1993 and 2001.