FAST MOTOR BUSES.

Thames Star, Volume LXV, Issue 18239, 13 July 1931, Page 2

FAST MOTOR BUSES.

EXPRESS TRAIN SPEED. NOW RUNNING IN FRANCE. CARRY 100 PASSENGERS. Buses, and fast ones, now operate on regular routes all over Europe, but it is only recently that a bus capable of express train speed has been developed and put in regular service. French automobile engineers designed what they call the “battleship” bus after more than two years of experiments, and on its trial trip between Paris and the French Riviera the huge automobile carried 100 passengers faster than they could have travelled by crack train and but little slower than the trip could have been made by airplane. Traffic conditions, of course, made it impossible for the driver of the bus—it has two drivers sitting at a double set of controls —to maintain anything like the machine’s maximum speed, but they did drive the huge car at an average speed of about 60 miles an hour and, on clear stretches of road, attained a speed of 85 miles an hour. The body of the machine is made of light but exceptionally strong metal so that the bus does not weigh as much as it appears to weigh. Even its engine and chassis, sturdy as they are, are made with a view to keeping’ down the weight, thus increasing the potential speed of the vehicle. Since its successful trip, the bus has been put in regular service between Paris and the smart watering places on the coast. Within the next few months duplicates will be completed and, eventually, a large fleet of the fast cars will cover regular routes between the capital and inland as well as sea-coast points.