British Municipal Buses in Portugal

From 1940 until the 1970s Britain supplied Portugal with many of its bus chassis. In the capital city of Lisbon, the local operator was CCFL who were the first buyer of heavyweight British-built bus chassis. Between 1947 and 1949 some 141 single-deckers were placed in service, mostly being AEC Regal IIIs, but with a smattering of Leyland OPS1s, Albion Valkyries and Maudslay Marathons. Many of the AECs were rebodied in the 1960s. The first double-deckers were Leyland Titan PD1As arriving in 1947, but from 1950 a large fleet of AEC Regent III and Vs were purchased with the last ones arriving in 1967 as integral UTIC-AECs. Small batches of Guy Conquest and AEC Reliances single-deckers arrived in the 1960s while between 1967 and 1972 55 Daimler Fleetlines were purchased, but these were the final British chassis built for Lisbon. Harvey tells the story of British buses in both Lisbon and Portugal as a whole, documenting a period where public transport in Portugal would have seemed familiar to any British tourist.