Bristol Lodekka

The Bristol Lodekka is a double-decker bus built by the British manufacturer Bristol Commercial Vehicles beginning in 1949, notable for a lowered-chassis design that used a dropped rear axle and a shallower step height to reduce the bus's overall height below the standard limit for a conventional double-decker of the time, allowing it to pass beneath low bridges and other obstructions that excluded taller rivals. Built primarily for state-owned and municipal bus operators in Britain because of postwar vehicle allocation rules that for some years restricted its sale to Bristol's own affiliated companies, it became a widely used and long-lived design across much of England and Wales, with production continuing into the 1960s. Its low-height engineering solution influenced later double-decker bus design.