In 1970, a new type of transport bus was introduced to the press in the UK called the Leyland National. It was to be something different than the typical British Bus.

In 1972, the first production units rolled off the assembly line at a new factory Lillyhall, near Workington. It was specifically built only to mass-produce the Leyland National.

The National was a bus that introduced modular construction, was designed by a famous auto stylist, and took some ideas from the American GM New Look Bus. However, even though it may have had many good intentions, the design and engineering processes that went into developing the National were flawed. Sometimes very flawed. And that is what we look at in this video.

The National was also supposed to have been produced in large numbers for the UK's export markets. However, sales outside the UK were poor and their largest order was for 450 buses for Caracas, Venezuela.

UPDATE - ADDITIONAL INFO:
In the last image of the video, there's a National in a river, but at the time that I made the video, the story of what happened was not known. Someone made a comment providing information on the cirucmstances that led to the bus ending up in the water. Here it is below:
From: @user-zr2zp7ek4p
In response to my post about the Leyland National in the river on the Ribble Buses Facebook group, several people commented on it with the following information. The National was allocated to the Ribble depot at Blackburn, and was working the 244 route from Blackburn to Bury via Rawtenstall. The location is the River Irwell at Bury Rd in Rawtenstall, the driver swerved to avoid an animal in the road. No date has been given, but looking at the photo I would say late '70s.

Thank you to whoever provided this comment!

About 7,000 Leyland National buses were built. Production ceased in 1985.


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Light Awash by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

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