AEC Regent 486: a life of service

By Simon Hucknall

| 18 Apr 2023

Classic & Sports Car – AEC Regent 486: a life of service

The weight of expectation is behind me. Quite literally.

This is the first time that anyone, outside of Transport Museum Wythall’s small and dedicated team responsible for AEC Regent 486’s rebirth, has driven the 91-year-old restored double-decker bus on the road.

And, thanks to its driver-only cab, those very people are forced to sit aft of me in the lower passenger deck, helpless if I make a pig’s ear out of it.

The AEC’s ‘piano front’ design limits top-deck passenger numbers

As I guide this giant time-capsule around Wythall’s dual-carriageways and roundabouts, their apprehension is palpable. As is mine.

It’s easy to see why. Setting aside its estimated £1million value today, Regent chassis 6611648, which emerged from AEC’s Southall works in west London in August 1931, is not only Britain’s oldest working metal-framed bus, but also a final hurrah to the mighty petrol engines that typically powered service buses until the early 1930s.

That it covered more than 300,000 miles, endured the Blitz on a secondment to London Transport, was stripped of its parts to support the war effort and almost ended its days as a makeshift home for more than two decades makes its survival all the more remarkable.

486 initially served the suburbs of Edgbaston, Quinton and Bartley Green, as well as Birmingham’s Outer Circle

Then again, this vehicle shared Rolls-Royce levels of engineering integrity. Service buses had been quite primitive affairs well into the ’20s, with many still running on solid tyres and few double-deckers bothering with roofs.

But the 1929 Regent 661 series, designed by AEC’s John Rackham, was a technical leap forward and had already proved popular with the Birmingham Corporation Tramway & Omnibus Department, which was running 107 buses using this chassis.

Fending off competition from multiple rivals, the Southall company delivered a further 60 chassis to BCT in 1931, each designed to carry 48 passengers, catering for the rapid expansion of Birmingham’s suburbs beyond the tramway network.

486 is extricated from Sollers Hope, where the AEC had been home to a retired miner

Most chassis wore composite bodies – in effect wooden-framed with metal inserts – but a small batch of 20 were sent to Metropolitan Cammell in Washwood Heath, Birmingham, to receive revolutionary metal-framed bodies with ‘top hat’-section pillars formed from cold-rolled tubing.

Initially expensive, raising the cost of the bus to £1650, it was felt that a metal frame would endure a longer, trouble-free service.

However, weighing 6 tons, 6cwt (6401kg), the top-to-bottom distribution of mass was an issue, and a truncated upper deck – known as the ‘piano front’ due to its distinctive profile – restricted passenger seating to 27, with 21 on the lower deck.

486 at Tyseley in 1975 (left); the AEC being shunted at Wythall

This kept overall mass lower down and minimised the risk of the bus falling on its side if it clouted a kerb after sliding across Birmingham’s cobbled streets.

Despite its advanced construction, this Regent’s AEC 6.1-litre in-line ‘six’, producing 95bhp at 3200rpm, represented the swansong for petrol-fuelled buses.

Gardner – and, later, AEC – was soon to prove that diesel engines, despite being noisier and generating more vibrations, were more durable and twice as economical, typically improving fuel consumption from 6mpg to 10mpg.

Regent 486 was built with a revolutionary metal frame

But that was no bar for 486 initially, which was pushed into service in December 1931 at Harborne Garage, serving the suburbs of Edgbaston, Quinton and Bartley Green, as well as Birmingham’s Outer Circle.

Given the generally rough-and-ready state of the city’s roads, it’s testament to the Regent 486’s overall build integrity that it met BCT’s requirement ‘never to have a bus break down’ – and this despite operating continuously for up to 18 hours per day and racking up 800 miles each week.

In fact, 486 only received its first major overhaul at Birmingham’s Tyburn Road Works after 90,000 miles of service, in February 1934 – and even then its body only required a ‘touch-up and varnish’, according to its record card.

The AEC’s cabin offers a fine view, while the steering gives a great workout

Being petrol-fuelled, however, did ultimately take it from frontline duties in 1937, as buses using more frugal five-cylinder Gardner diesel engines started to proliferate.

But with the outbreak of war, Regent 486 was back in demand. The Blitz of 1940 had decimated London’s transport infrastructure, with buses and trams destroyed throughout the capital.

A call was made to operators across the country for support, and BCT provided 30 Regents, with 486 adopted by Turnham Green Garage, west of the City.

The attention to detail is painstaking, with recreated window stickers (left) and hand-painted logos

As it pounded London’s bomb-stricken streets around Greenford, Chiswick, Ealing and Hammersmith, it was only a matter of luck that 486 survived unscathed.

As it neared 10 years old, 486 returned to Birmingham in November 1941, after the city suffered its own loss of 145 buses as the Blitz continued to wreak havoc across the country.

But despite its steel-framed body remaining in fine fettle, an engine failure finally put it out of service, and it was stored at Perry Barr Garage and used as a parts supply for other buses.

Every aspect, including 486’s chain-driven windscreen wiper, has been faithfully restored

After the war ended it was sent to Devey’s scrap merchants in Staffordshire on 23 July 1946.

So how did the very same bus that you see resplendent here today survive the cutting torch? Incredibly, Devey’s sold the bus as living accommodation for a retired miner called Mr Preece, in rural Herefordshire.

Then in ’69, after it had served as a home for 24 years, rumours about a piano-fronted AEC Regent led a group of Brummie bus enthusiasts to Preece’s field in the village of Sollers Hope.

The upper deck’s hide seats were for grubby workers

After an initial meeting with a shotgun-toting Preece, the group retreated, only to be contacted by the parish council the following year to say that the 92-year-old inhabitant of the bus was moving to more salubrious premises, and that the Regent – still wearing its original ‘OV 4486’ registration number, but with much of its lower front-end and interior missing – was theirs.

The path to full and final restoration was tortuous, with only partial work being done over the following decade as Birmingham’s bus preservation community matured and grew its funding.

A key landmark was the formation of the Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Trust charity in 1978, which secured the site where 486 is now based and was the forerunner of today’s Transport Museum Wythall.

Moquette cloth trim in BCT colours on the AEC’s lower deck

Even then, it wasn’t until 2013, when Wythall had collected £500,000 through donations, legacies and grant funding, that restoration started in earnest on the AEC.

From a scope of work written by Wythall’s project manager, Rob Handford, it was decided to appoint Dorking-based bus restoration specialist Ian Barrett to carry out 486’s core rebuild.

Wythall provided Ian with an AEC Matador engine containing many serviceable parts, including a crankshaft plus oil and water pumps, along with another engine matching the Regent’s original design and from which the crankcase and cylinder head were to be used.

Simple controls in the driver’s cabin

While Ian concentrated on the painstaking rebuild of 486’s complex steel structure, a newly retired Rob carried out much of the exquisite hand-painting of the aluminium body panels, with an overhaul of the mechanicals entrusted to an alleged ‘expert’ in classic commercial powertrains.

By 2018, the Regent was ready for its first test drive but, with Rob at the wheel, it managed just 20 miles before the newly rebuilt engine suffered a catastrophic big-end failure.

The team was devastated, but there was worse to come. Repairs were carried out under warranty, after which 486 was driven back to Wythall in December 2018.

‘Step on to 486 and you enter a long-forgotten world. Wythall’s attention to detail transports you back to a different era’

A further four months of cosmetic work – mainly varnishing and signwriting – ensued, before the team took it on a final shakedown prior to its April 2019 press launch.

Everything ran like clockwork until flames started to flicker through the bonnet’s louvres. Within 40 seconds, the team managed to extinguish the fire, which had been caused by fuel leaking from a breather pipe, linked to a holed carburettor float.

But it turned out that was just the thin end of the wedge: a further 177 mechanical and electrical faults were found, all stemming from work done by the unnamed expert, who by then could no longer be tracked down.

486’s 6120cc ‘six’ was the end of the line for petrol bus engines

Ian gamely contributed a sum equal to 10% of the original mechanical restoration as a goodwill gesture towards the £33,000 of rectification work now needed, which included a new block (bored out to 7.4 litres) and pistons, white-metal bearings, a new flywheel and the renovation of a half-blocked radiator.

Rob and his small team, including technical guru Mick Evans, gave up 18 months of their own time for free, working alongside specialist contractors to complete the work once more.

Their moment of glory finally arrived at the Classic Motor Show at the NEC in November 2021, where AEC Regent 486 took pride of place on the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs’ stand.

The AEC’s hand-painted signs tell of another age

Step on to the varnished slats of 486’s open rear platform and you enter a long-forgotten world, where exquisite craftsmanship touched even the most utilitarian of devices.

Wythall’s impeccable attention to detail truly takes you back to a different era. Spun-steel light fittings abound, linoleum covers the aisles and this Regent’s original stainless-steel handrails remain in place.

High-quality varnished woodwork surrounds all the windows (some of which can be wound up and down with a chromium handle), and I learn that the difference in seat trim – moquette in BCT colours on the lower deck, bull-hide for the upper-deck seats – meant that ladies sat below, and (generally) male factory workers, in their grubby overalls, sat on the top deck.

You wait ages for a bus… and this time it was worth it

But today I’m up front in an immaculately painted cab, sealed off from the rest of the (rightly nervous) passengers.

Before me is a four-spoke steering wheel of roughly 20in diameter, a staggered but conventional three-pedal layout and a long, straight gearlever sprouting up with an H-pattern shift.

To my right is a vertical handbrake and a prominent bulb-horn poking from the bulkhead. Three dials are mounted below the windscreen for oil pressure, speed and water temperature.

The AEC’s spectacular revival landed the Best Restoration trophy in the 2022 Royal Automobile Club Historic Awards

We’re on the level so we start off in second. I’ve been told to make good use of the revs (this is petrol power, remember), especially between gears when downchanging, the Regent’s being a traditional crash ’box.

But take your time when swapping ratios and it all blends nicely. The Regent happily sits at 35mph – 40mph being its maximum speed – and feels immensely stable, with little play in the steering, although I’d need to renew my gym membership if I were to drive through a city every day.

AEC’s patented triple-vacuum servo brakes are strong and reassuring for this amateur bus driver, and in general the Regent has the same taut, thoroughly engineered feel that you’d imagine its first Brummie driver would have relished more than 90 years ago.

In other words, it’s an absolute delight.

Images: Luc Lacey

Thanks to: Transport Museum Wythall

Factfile

AEC Regent 1

Sold/number built 1929-’33/1845
Construction pressed-steel chassis, cold-rolled pillar frame, aluminium panels
Engine all-iron, ohv 6120cc straight-six, Autovac fuel system
Max power 95bhp @ 3200rpm
Max torque n/a
Transmission four-speed manual, RWD
Suspension semi-elliptic leaf springs with dampers front and rear
Steering Marles worm and roller
Brakes drums, with triple-vacuum servo
Length 25ft (7620mm)
Width 7ft 6in (2286mm)
Height 14ft 6in (4420mm)
Wheelbase 15ft 6½in (4730mm)
Weight 14,112lb (6401kg)
0-60mph n/a
Top speed 40mph
Mpg 4-6
Price new £1650
Price now £1million (est)*