AEC Q-type

The AEC Q-type was a British bus built by the Associated Equipment Company and launched in 1932, made as both a single-decker and a double-decker. Its unusual feature was a side-mounted engine, set longitudinally behind the front axle and tilted to one side so that the driver's cab could sit on the front overhang with the entrance opposite. G. J. Rackham designed it after noting the sales of the American Fageol Twin Coach, but where the Twin Coach carried two engines the Q carried one. The engine came in petrol or diesel form, and the first London General Omnibus Company bus had a crash gearbox while later ones used the pre-select type. British operators were slow to take it up, partly because carburettor fires on petrol models, and it last appeared in the 1937 catalogue. London Transport still bought more than 200 diesel single-deckers with centre sliding doors as its first standard Country Bus type, and five AEC 761T trolleybus versions were built.