Several German bus manufacturers have tried in the past to crack the North American bus market. While having some success with intercity and touring coaches, they haven’t been able to establish a long-term presence with their urban transit models. We’ve reviewed Neoplan’s attempt here. Now let’s look at MAN’s somewhat more limited and abrupt endeavor in the Eighties – the MAN Americana.
You have to give German bus manufacturers credit – they clearly saw an opening in the US transit bus market in the decade of the 1980’s. The GM RTS II, though somewhat improved from its disastrous early years, was hardly held with the same reverence as its New and Old Look predecessors. Another option was the Grumman/Flxible 870, which was trying to redeem its reputation from its early 80’s cracked A-Frame debacle. Some US transit operators, like Detroit, were so disappointed with US options that they purchased GM of Canada “Classic” coaches with their own money, as they didn’t qualify for federal grants under the “Buy America” legislation.
MAN had several European buses that could be quickly and fairly inexpensively modified to meet US Dept of Transportation requirements. But to compete successfully, the company would need to establish a US assembly plant. So they did – forming the MAN Truck and Bus Manufacturing Corp. in Cleveland, North Carolina in 1980. Construction took several years with the first bus leaving the production line in 1984. We should note that this wasn’t MAN’s first effort in North America – the company had partnered with AM General in the late Seventies to co-produce and sell its 55/60 foot SG 220 articulated model.
This new bus was the SL 40-102 – called the MAN “Americana” – 40 feet long and 102 inches wide – standard bus size in North America. It was based off the MAN SL 202, a European model that was 11.5 meters long (37 and one-half feet) and 98 inches across. The Americana’s most distinctive feature may have been one of the first uses of the Luminator flip-dot digital electronic destination sign.
Unfortunately, there were several key areas that MAN didn’t change from its European model. First was the engine – it came with a MAN D 2566 inline 6-cylinder 11.4-liter (696 cubic inch) diesel. It was mounted underfloor horizontally (laydown) towards the rear of the bus. The engine typically developed around 220 horsepower, and about 560 lb-ft of torque. Rather than a typical Allison, the transmission was a Renk-Doromat 874 4-speed automatic. While this engine/transmission combo proved fairly reliable, there were not a lot of mechanics skilled on MAN diesels/Renk transmissions in city fleet repair facilities in the US. Parts were another issue – MAN had a limited parts distribution network, but it was noted that many parts still needed to be sourced from Germany, increasing downtime. One wonders how many more orders they could have had by offering the option of a Cummins with an Allison automatic – the Cummins inline L10 diesel, popular in buses, was available in a laydown configuration.
Secondly, the bus was not engineered to accept a wheel chair lift – and with the forthcoming Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) that proved, per below, to be a fatal oversight.
Even with these drawbacks, several US cities came forward with orders. The largest, and most committed was from the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). CTA put in a huge order for 362 buses in 1984, with the first batch arriving in 1985. Other smaller orders followed; Seattle, Minneapolis, Houston, and New Orleans.
So what happened? In early 1988 the CTA put in an even larger order for 482 buses, and MAN started production. A few months later, disability advocates in Chicago filed a lawsuit against the CTA for awarding the contract without any stipulation for wheelchair lifts. The court sided with the advocates that this was discriminatory and placed an injunction on CTA from ordering any new buses without some method permitting disabled access. The entire MAN order was cancelled. That judgment, along with several others, contributed toward passage of the ADA two years later.
The loss of such a large order forced MAN to re-think its US operations, and they concluded there was little chance it could do so profitably. A quick decision was made to close the Cleveland plant, which ceased operations in 1988. It was subsequently sold to Daimler, and still operates today as the company’s largest US manufacturing plant for its Freightliner line of trucks.
Fun Fact 1: MAN is an acronym for Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg.
Fun Fact 2: CTA “got a lot of miles” out of several of their Americanas, with the last one retiring in 2004.
An interesting article Jim, I never knew MAN urban/regional buses crossed the pond. Back in the eighties, the public transport bus market was still a domestic affair, each country in Europe seemed to have its own bus manufacturer(s), or at least coachbuilders. Now it’s much more of a mixed/international bag, the MAN Lion’s City is one of the current public transport offerings (MAN’s long distance coaches are sold under the brand name Neoplan).
We had the AM General/MAN articulateds in Pittsburgh in the early eighties, along with a bunch of Neoplans, some RTSes, and a fair number of Fishbowls, many of which were refurbished.
A final bit of trivia, in the 2000s, MAN was acquired by VW forming Traton alongside Scania and International.
Fun fact #3: The band that was later known as “Chicago” was originally named “Chicago Transit Authority” until they got sued by the Chicago Transit Authority.
Here is a short video about MAN Americana:
MAN pronounced as the word man, but correct is m-a-n, so as separate letters, right? (unlike DAF, I must add).
Right, that’s what it is. M-A-N.
Thanks, which means the bus is an MAN instead of a man.
I saw that video also but noted it was clearly AI-generated and contains several inaccuracies.
It is AI generated and as such depressing and crappy because it was designed to be longer than useful or necessary only because longer videos on Youtube generate more ad revenue. The script was unbearable to listen to, and many of the images were not relevant to the script. This is the very definition of AI slop; welcome to the future.
BTW, I would ask our readers not to post these AI slop videos, and if they are, I may well take them down. I’m not going to allow this garbage on our site.
Ad on the bus in the lead photo is for Piedmont Airlines, my dad’s favorite. Long gone, absorbed into USAir, which merged with America West, which merged with American. I fueled all of those airlines during my fairly brief aviation career.
I don’t have knowledge of the larger picture, but all of the Americanas made for Seattle had wheel chair lifts installed. I worked for Lift-U, Inc. at the time and designed the electronic control system for them. I visited the plant in North Carolina a couple of times during development (nice folks!). The lift is a little hard to see, but definitely recognizable in the photo of the Seattle Metro bus.
Interesting.
Even with this uglified rear end, those MANs look so much better than their American rivals.
Euro versions of these proved to be very reliable and long lasting, it is amazing that MAN didn’t care about wheelchair lift installment. There were full low floor buses around the corner those days, though.
I thought that the German transit bus manufacturers saw opportunity in the U.S. transit bus market, but quickly found out why GM and others got out of the market! Most transit properties relied heavily on federal funding, which was inconsistant. ADA compliance was another complex issue, which eventually mandated low-floor buses. The GM/MCI/Novabus Classic was probably the best transit available in the late 80’s, and despite not qualifying for federal funding some properties did buy them without federal assistance. Santa Monica Municipal was a major one in addition to Detroit. One of the reasons GM originally designed the Classic was to accommodate a wheel chair lift on the front door, even though the last ‘New Looks’ were also so equipped. These days New Flyer and Gillig are about it for transit buses here in the U.S..
Re engines: San Fransisco MUNI attempted to swap horizontal-layout Detroit 6L71’s into their MAN SG-310 articulated buses. According to the CPTDB Wiki they only managed to retrofit one bus before the effort was cancelled and the rest of the engines they had ordered were auctioned off. It’s a real shame, because MAN’s were made better than the majority of buses made in the 80’s and would arguably still be better than most North American buses made today.
When Orion imported Ikarus artics from Hungary they offered a choice of the Cummins NHHTC or the Detroit 6L71. However, those buses suffered from their own particular set of issues (namely that you could practically watch them rust right before your eyes).