The engineering innovation that paved the way for the buses of the future

Colin Hunt had his own company, Duple Metsec Ltd., which was a major supplier of tri-axle double deck body chassis buses to southeast Asia, namely Hong Kong and Singapore.

Here, he tells us more:

“Our chassis partners, Dennis Specialist Vehicles, had developed a new low floor product for Hong Kong, the Trident. This was fully compliant to UK DDA requirements which was also adopted by Hong Kong. My task as Engineering Director was to develop an all-new body, in complete known-down (CKD) form, for assembly in territory.”

“Working with an assembly partner in Portugal at the prototype stage, this was achieved in record time and some 1,000 plus examples were subsequently put into service in Hong Kong.

“Others followed, including the USA (New York in open top form), Vancouver, and Singapore. These early examples are now time expired but successors continue to be designed in the UK and delivered to an even wider operator base worldwide.”

Colin continues:

“This product, first designed, tested, developed and homologated in the UK in the early 2000s, has been a major success for UK PLC and its engineering capabilities.”

Duple Metsec was absorbed into Walter Alexander in the year 2000.

Colin graduated from Loughborough in 1969 with a BTech in Automotive Engineering and Design.