AM General Metropolitan

The AM General Metropolitan was a diesel-powered transit bus that AM General sold to United States transit agencies from 1974 to 1979. It was the American version of the Canadian Western Flyer D700. Western Flyer licensed that design to AM General in 1970 because it wanted the larger American market and, under Buy America rules, needed a US-based assembler, while AM General, invited to join the Transbus project, wanted experience building transit buses. AM General changed the exterior, giving it rectangular side windows in place of the slanted ones of the D700, which was styled after the GM New Look bus, and it used the GM V drive layout instead of Flyer's T drive, which led to cracked frames after several years of service. A total of 5,212 diesel Metropolitans were sold, the first to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and in 1979 AM General also built 219 Metropolitan trolleybuses for Seattle Metro and SEPTA. Flyer then adopted the Metropolitan exterior for its own D800 and E800.