Unsung heroes: Bedford JJL

Most of the unsung heroes I have featured so far are cars, but the very first one was a bus and today I return to that theme. It's fair to say the Dennis Dart is one of the major success stories of the bus industry, bridging the gap between minibuses and full-size single-deckers and creating a whole new class of vehicle, but a similar bus could have appeared on the market over a decade before the Dart's 1989 launch. This was the Bedford JJL, an innovative rear-engined purpose-built minibus that was first revealed in prototype form back in 1976 but never reached production, and in many ways was a Dart before its time.

Bedford's biggest missed opportunity or the right product at the wrong time?

The JJL was developed jointly by General Motors' commercial vehicle operation at Dunstable and coachbuilders Marshall of Cambridge, and the body design evolved from the Marshall Camuta project that was originally intended for fitment to a Leyland chassis. It was 8.5 metres long (exactly the same size as the smallest version of the Dart) with 24 seats and space for ten standing passengers, so it was a little bit smaller than the Bedford VAS, which with its front engine and entrance behind the front axle wasn't really suitable for urban bus work. The power unit was the familiar Bedford 330 diesel as used in other bus and truck applications, but here it was uniquely mounted at the rear. All other Bedford PSV chassis had either front or underfloor engines, so the JJL would have been their first and only rear-engined model.

It was a semi-integral vehicle, with Bedford running units under bodywork built by Marshall that looked rather chunky, angular and attractive with similarities to the contemporary Vauxhall car range, and I believe Vauxhall's famed head of styling Wayne Cherry may have been involved. In fact, the JJL's styling would still have looked fresh and modern alongside the various bodies built on the Dart in the 1990s, and it really doesn't look like a product of the seventies. Sadly, by the early eighties General Motors' UK operations were starting to lose their independence, with Vauxhall cars becoming nothing more than rebadged Opels and much of the development work for new models being shifted to Germany. It is unclear exactly what happened, but against that background the JJL project was ultimately cancelled and a few years later in 1986 Bedford ceased production of heavy commercial vehicles altogether.

A rear engine isn't what you'd expect from Bedford

Only four prototypes were ever built (registered UKK 335X, AVS 903T, EKX 648T and HKX 553V in order), and when the project died all were sold to loyal Bedford customer Maidstone Borough Transport. Being the first prototype but not registered until 1981, UKK 335X had presumably been built around 1976 and used by Bedford as an unregistered development vehicle, only being registered by Maidstone after sale to them. All later went on to other operators, but HKX 553V is now the sole survivor and is currently owned by a retirement home near Blackpool, who sometimes exhibit it at bus rallies in the north of England. I was lucky enough to see it in the flesh back in 1999 when it was displayed at the Luton Festival of Transport by then-owner Goodmans of Peterborough, and it struck me at the time how similar it was in concept and execution to a Dart.

The JJL wasn't quite dead though. Firstly Marshall tested potential demand for it in 1985 but concluded it wasn't viable at that time, and then, no doubt inspired by the success of the Dart, Bedford's successor AWD attempted to revive it in the early nineties and bought one of the original prototypes, but nothing ultimately came of this. Although it hasn't been officially confirmed, elements of the JJL do appear to have made it into a production vehicle much later. In 1995 the Marshall Minibus was launched as Marshall's attempt to rival the Dart, and although now sharing its mechanical parts with ERF trucks the overall concept and appearance bore a striking resemblance to the JJL. At the very least, the JJL must surely have provided some inspiration and it seems possible that Marshall dusted off the 20-year old drawings and tweaked them a bit to create the Minibus. Sadly it wasn't a patch on the Dart, chronic unreliability and poor build quality rendering it a dismal failure, and many were scrapped after less than a decade's service.

Some of the JJL's DNA must have gone into the Marshall Minibus. Shame it was such a failure.

So was the Bedford JJL a missed opportunity, or are modern-day views skewed by hindsight and would it have flopped through being aimed at a market that simply didn't exist at the time? This is a subject of much debate as on the one hand the industry was still heavily regulated, and the big urban minibus revolution was several years away and would need to go through various stages of growth before reaching the point where the Dart was justified. On the other hand, use of minibuses on rural routes and dial-a-ride type services was already starting to rise by the mid-1970s and these tended to be crude van or truck-based vehicles with little in the way of passenger comfort, so the JJL would have been a significant improvement. This was still a fairly small market though, so would it have been enough to justify the expense of a bespoke product? The four JJL prototypes gave good service to the various operators who ran them over the years, so there seemed to be little wrong with the engineering of the vehicle itself.

The AWD revival was arguably the greater missed opportunity as this came at the very time that the Dart was at the height of its success and lacked any real competition, so the JJL may have just been a decade or so ahead of its time and the idea deserved to be picked up again later. The Marshall Minibus came a bit too late and appeared just as the low-floor revolution was starting, so even without its own failings it probably wouldn't have achieved much. There is no denying the impact of the very similar Dennis Dart, and after London Buses persuaded Dennis to shorten it to 8.5 metres this ended up at almost exactly the same size and capacity as the JJL. Who can say for sure how well the JJL would have fared in the climate of the late seventies and if it could have done enough to save Bedford bus and coach production? It's open to debate but it certainly has the potential to be an unsung hero that might have changed the bus industry long before the Dennis Dart appeared on the scene, yet sadly never had the chance.

An early Dennis Dart, very similar to the JJL and a great success