Unsung heroes: CVE Omni

Travel on any modern low-floor bus and you'll soon notice a fundamental design problem. With the engine mounted at the rear, a flat floor is impossible and while the front half may be nice and low there's always an awkward arrangement of steps or ramps up to the back seats. Wouldn't it make far more sense to put the engine at the front and drive the front wheels so it's completely out of the way of the passenger compartment? Such a vehicle did exist almost thirty years ago and had the potential to revolutionise the minibus industry but sadly turned out to be a bit of a flop that has disappeared into obscurity, so I've nominated it as my final unsung hero of the year.

H389 KPY is the sole surviving Omni in PSV service
(By Pimlico Badger - EMPHAST H389KPY, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25343829)

City Vehicle Engineering commenced operation in 1988 from a brand new factory in Shildon, County Durham, to build under license the innovative low-floor minibus designed by the Austrian firm of Steyr. Known as the Omni, it was powered by a 2.5-litre Land Rover engine driving the front wheels, which allowed a step-free entrance to a flat floor just a foot above ground level, so much easier than the mountain of steps encountered when boarding a conventional minibus. Clad entirely in fibreglass, it was a lightweight yet very strong structure and adverts showed an Omni sitting upsidedown on its roof with no ill-effects!

There are a few model Omnis around as the boxy shape is easy to scratch-build

Two models were available. The PSV version had 23 seats and a large destination box and was aimed at urban bus services, while the welfare version had ambulance-type rear doors and a variety of interior configurations to accommodate a mix of seated passengers and wheelchairs. Thanks to the low floor throughout, there was no need for a heavy and cumbersome lift and wheelchair users could board quickly and easily via a simple ramp, aided by the air suspension on the rear. In the 1980s, most welfare buses were still very crude truck-based vehicles with little in the way of comfort or style so the Omni was far more sophisticated and a great improvement.

Although CVE anticipated an even split between the two, the majority of sales were of the welfare version, with even London Buses buying some. The largest operator of the PSV version was CMT of Aintree, who bought half a dozen for Liverpool city services but didn't keep them long, and most went to independents in ones and twos. The power unit turned out to be the Omni's Achilles' heel as a service bus. As had already been shown by the FX4R taxi, Land Rover engines just didn't work in intensive stop-start urban environments and breakdowns were rife. CVE soon introduced a Perkins Phaser option that eventually became standard, but the unreliability of these early examples had already put a lot of operators off and few came back for repeat orders.

The only Omni I've ever seen in the flesh. Motorhome conversions were a common fate.

After a promising start, CVE got into financial trouble in 1991 and was reconstructed as the Omni Bus Company. There was quite a delay before production resumed, and sadly this hiatus was another nail in the Omni's coffin as potential customers became worried about after-sales support and availability of spare parts and sales slumped in the following years. OBC basically abandoned the PSV market and concentrated their efforts on the Perkins-engined welfare model, aiming it primarily at county councils for social services work, so that was the end of this innovative concept as a normal service bus.

Another restructure in 1993 saw production transferred to Omni Coach Ltd and continue in small numbers largely as before. The last new development was a longer three-axle version, two of which were supplied to Whippet Coaches for stage carriage work. Otherwise, declining sales precluded any further investment and series production ended in 1996. The company continued to exist for a few more years though and built the occasional new Omni, most notably three more tri-axle vehicles that were fitted out with battery power for the Strathclyde Passenger Transport Executive. An electric front-wheel drive low-floor minibus sounds ideal for modern urban applications, but technical problems meant they were never actually used and the concept quickly died.

This M-reg must have been one of the last built for stage service
(By Clive A Brown on Flickr, used under Creative Commons licensing)

The Omni also had potential in other markets where its low floor was an advantage over normal van or truck-based vehicles. Early on, CVE built prototypes of a mobile home and an ambulance along with a couple of vans, and later there was a mobile library and some dental surgeries. Little came of these ideas though, possibly due to the expense of a bespoke vehicle, and the vast majority were welfare buses. Most customers were non-PSV operators such as community transport organisations, care homes, councils and health authorities, and few Omnis ever carried regular fare-paying passengers. Just two were exported, to Japan and New Zealand, and plans for a left-hand drive version came to nothing.

By now the Omni was virtually dead in the water but it might have enjoyed a renaissance as the 21st century dawned. Omni Coach made an attempt to re-enter the PSV market in 1998, which could have seen the design finally come of age as the low-floor revolution was just beginning and the Optare Solo was about to take low-floor minibuses into the mainstream. For reasons that aren't clear, it wasn't to be and the new millennium wouldn't see any more Omnis appearing on bus services, which is a shame as the concept was much better than what we have today and with sustained development I think it could have worked. Omni Coach was dissolved in 1999 and that was the end of the story. Total production was around 400 in a decade, a far cry from CVE's grand prediction of 600 a year, and only a very small proportion of those were public service buses.   

So much unrealised potential and now it's on the rubbish heap

The spiritual successors of the Omni live on in the form of the welfare buses built by the likes of Rohill and Bluebird, which combine the front end of a FWD van with a bespoke spaceframe chassis. While these have achieved a fair bit of success in the welfare market, they are still niche products that really haven't caught on among PSV operators. Experience suggests they still have the same problem as the Omni and are a bit too fragile for intensive stage carriage work, yet instead of pushing for the development of this idea into a more robust form, operators tend to stick with rear-engined vehicles like the Solo and StreetLite, with all the compromises that entails.

Had the Omni been developed in the same way, nowadays a front engine and FWD layout could be the accepted wisdom for low-floor buses. Wouldn't that be so much more user-friendly than the cumbersome rear-engined norm that tries to put the engine and the passengers in the same space? As things stand, most Omnis have long since been scrapped and its existence is basically forgotten; a handful survive as mobile homes and incredibly there is one left in PSV service with Empress of Hastings. For its brave efforts to do things differently and for being so far ahead of its time, I feel the Omni is very deserving of a place among the ranks of the bus industry's unsung heroes, but what do you think?

The Bluebird Tucana, similar to concept to the Omni but little more successful