This Is The Weirdest Bus Ever Built And It’s Been Lost To Time

I know I use the term “weird” a good deal, at times on autos that really do not ought to have it. I’m making use of it yet again nowadays, but I feel you will agree that its use is justified this time. In the 1950s, a Paris tour operator took some Citroën U55 trucks and experienced them developed into quite probably the wildest buses to have ever existed. These are the Citroën U55 Cityrama Currus.

Previous evening, my foreseeable future wife and I wound down the weekend with YouTube and pizza. When flipping by films we visited the channel of just one of our favorites: The Tim Traveller. Tim treks the environment documenting obscure destinations and genuinely neat public transportation. This time, however, he has a serious handle. Back again in the 1950s, Paris tour organization Groupe Cityrama commissioned wild buses that have seemingly given that been missing to time.

There is surprisingly tiny info about these buses that is easily available. A selection of small individual weblogs have protected it as nicely as Tim up there, a design car journal and weirdly, a British isles-dependent coverage corporation. We touched on it 12 several years in the past, too.

As the story goes, Groupe Cityrama launched in 1956 to offer tourism to Paris, France. Now, due to the fact Paris is a major tourism metropolis, Cityrama was getting into into a aggressive marketplace. Cityrama’s approach to be various was to go significant and bold. The tour group’s sightseeing buses would be like nothing ever observed before or given that.

Cityrama selected the Citroën Type 55 utility truck as the bones for its buses. These workhorses featured both 4.6-liter gasoline sixes making 73 HP or a 5.2-liter diesel six developing 86 HP. Introduced in 1953 and manufactured all of the way to 1965, these vehicles were being the backbones for fireplace engines, flatbeds and these five to 10 peculiar buses.

Cityrama took these vehicles to coachbuilder Currus, which turned them into the buses you see listed here. As Tim notes, the layout ambitions had been to make a double-decker, largely glass bus that appeared like nothing at all else. Perfectly, mission accomplishment. Take a appear at this factor.

There is so much heading on with this Cityrama bus. It seems like it has a boat hull up front, there are tail fins in again, and the purple character line turns into a substantial wing over the next deck. Oh, and sure, that’s a spear pointing off of the entrance. The roof on the second deck was also detachable for sightseeing excursions on warm days.

Equally Tim and Product Car Assessment Magazine take note that the bus was not just strange but innovative, much too. Each and every seat acquired headsets that broadcast commentary of the landscapes in a variety of languages.

The Citroën U55 Cityrama Currus grew to become an prompt strike with travellers, and they had been so well known that they had been highlighted in nearby videos. There are several photos out there of these buses, so they are preserved largely in media.

One particular well-liked movie to feature these buses is Zazie dans le Métro:

Sadly, the distinctive buses did operate into some challenges, notably with their engines overheating. More than time, Cityrama experienced second and third grilles additional as well as an oil cooler. If nearly anything, the addition of the grilles just built the buses look even much more silly.

Eventually, as the Model Vehicle Critique Magazine notes, the buses have been retired in 1980 and replaced by standard sightseeing buses. Not substantially is known about what took place to the handful of buses generated.

A person observed its way into a circus. A different was uncovered in a unhappy condition in 2008.

It blows my head that a little something so interesting was created with so minimal proof of its existence. If you know something even further about these buses, specially where by 1 of them may well be, ship me an email. I’d love to keep on shining a mild on a single of the wildest buses at any time developed.