Leyland Motors: Tiger Cub

Note: This is a sub-section of Leyland Motors
The Leyland Tiger Cub (coded as PSUC1) was a lightweight underfloor-engined chassis built by Leyland Motors between 1951 and 1970, most as 44-45 seat buses, with a smaller number as coaches. The standard bodied dimensions were 30 feet long by 8ft wide, the UK maximum at launch in 1952.
It was named when a lighter-weight chassis was introduced in 1952 as a modification to the older Leyland Royal Tiger (type PSU1), which was regarded by certain influential customers, especially in the BET group of privately-managed bus companies, as overweight, over-specified and too expensive, those who were operating it were also finding vacuum-servo versions under-braked.
It was powered initially by a Leyland O350H 91bhp 5.76-litre diesel engine, a horizontal version of the engine fitted to the Comet 90. It had a newly designed lightweight high straight frame with a vertical radiator set just behind the front axle.
The launch transmission was the same four-speed constant mesh unit which had been used in the Tiger PS1, Titan PD1 and their export equivalents. There was a choice of either a single-speed or two-speed rear axle, both of spiral-bevel form and derived from the Comet 90 design, the latter using an electrically-actuated Eaton driving head in a Leyland casing.
Wheels were of the 8-stud type and diaphragm-type air braking was standard. This was the first time Leyland had offered a bus chassis without another braking option, whilst vacuum or vacuum-hydraulic brakes were still standard across most of the UK bus and coach industry.
The prototypes were bodied by Saunders-Roe (SARO) of Anglesey as 44-seat buses. The bodied Tiger Cub weighed around two tons less than an equivalent Royal Tiger, with commensurate savings in fuel.
The initial production model was type PSUC1/1T, with the two-speed axle as standard. Omission of this was a no-cost option, in which case the T-suffix was omitted.
In 1953 two variants emerged. For coaching duties type PSUC1/2T had a dropped-frame extension at the rear for a luggage boot and a higher-ratio rear axle for a higher road speed.
In 1952 Leyland had bought Self-Changing Gears of Coventry. This company owned the patents for the preselective type of epicyclic gearbox which Leyland had fitted to the RTL & RTW Titans it sold to London Transport. It was working on a new type of direct-acting epicyclic gearbox at the time of the Leyland takeover. Leyland announced this product in 1953 as the Pneumocyclic; the first two demonstrators were Leyland Titan NTF9 and Tiger Cub PTE592.
Although conceived for the home market, export versions were soon introduced, these were the OPSUC1, with heavier duty tyres and suspension, and the LOPSUC1, which also had left hand drive, suffixes and options as for home market models.
In 1962 the power unit became the 125 bhp 6.75-litre O400H and the type codes were revised, to PSUC1/11, PSUC1/12T and PSUC1/13. These were respectively manual bus, manual coach and pneumocyclic bus versions. The narrow models were discontinued. At this time the manual transmission options changed to Leyland 4-speed synchromesh or Albion 5-speed constant mesh. Production continued until 1969.
Bodies were produced on UK Tiger Cubs by Alexander, Beadle, Burlingham, Crossley, Duple, Duple (Midland), East Lancashire, Fowler, Harrington, Marshall, Massey, Metro-Cammell, Northern Counties, Park Royal, Pennine, Plaxton, Roe, SARO, UTA, Weymann, Willowbroook and Yeates.
Major export markets for the Tiger Cub were Denmark, The Netherlands, Jamaica, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Leyland often sold export batches with Metro-Cammell Weymann group (MCW) bodywork, but bodies were also produced by other UK firms and by local coachbuilders.
See Also
- [1] Wikipedia