Eastern Bloc cars made it to North America from time to time, even back when the Warsaw Pact existed. Canada had Lada and Skoda passenger cars, the former offered all the way into the mid-'90s, while the U.S. had, ahem, something that rhymes with Hugo. Out of these three brands, it was Lada that had the greatest amount of commercial success, offering budget-minded drivers in the frigid Canadian tundra something that was ... a close relative of 1960s Fiats, at least until brands like Hyundai finally came to the rescue.

But there was also something much larger: For a number of years, big cities in the U.S. and Canada also saw Ikarus buses, made in Hungary -- for decades the country's most significant contribution to the world of transport.

Ikarus' foothold in North America came about as a result of major shifts in the U.S. bus industry. The impetus for these shifts was the end of the production of GM and Flxible's New Look buses, seen in the 1996 movie "Speed," among many others. The vacuum created by the end of production of New Look models around 1978 meant that large cities with extensive bus fleets had to get creative. A number of smaller manufacturers tried to fill the void, and this included Crown Coach, which until the late 1970s had been producing school buses, whose level of technology rarely needed updates.

Unable to come up with a modern city bus on its own, Crown entered into a partnership with Hungary-based Ikarus, whose annual production figures at the time dwarfed the output of all the other North American bus manufacturers.

The basic 280 interior features a slightly shorter rear section connected by a rubber Petr Dadak

The result of the partnership was the Crown-Ikarus 286, a version of its articulated 280 base model that had been in production for a number of years and had already been exported to many countries. The U.S.-tailored 286 kept the articulated layout -- cities needed to cram as many people as they could into these buses -- and offered it in 55- and 60-foot lengths, with enough room for about 160 sitting and standing passengers. The two varieties basically differed on the number of doors and the length of the trailer: The longer 60-foot version had three main doors, while the shorter version had two. The Ikarus 280 platform supported dozens of changes, so it was very easy to mix and match sections, windows and doors to the needs of particular markets.

The body shells of the 286 were made in Hungary and then shipped to Los Angeles where they were fitted with engines, transmissions and other locally sourced components including Cummins diesels with output ranging from 290 hp to 350 hp, based on the needs of transit systems that ordered the buses. Unlike the four-speed manual transmissions fitted to domestic market versions of the 280, the Crown-Ikarus 286 buses received automatic transmissions made by Allison and Voith.

Despite American engines and gearboxes as well as modified interiors, the Ikarus 286 was still a little foreign.

First, the passenger floor was very high for the era, and it required a lot of steps to climb. The 200 series was planned in the 1960s, when such ergonomic issues were not given much priority, and by the 1980s, it remained a bit of an outlier in the U.S. domestic fleets. Second, the Ikarus was narrower than most U.S. metro transit buses, which limited the amount of standing room. U.S. manufacturers sought to maximize the floor space by stretching the buses horizontally, while most Eastern Bloc buses such as LiAZ, LAZ, PAZ and Ikarus conformed to midsize truck regulations. Third, the base Ikarus 280 model was articulated in the middle while most U.S. metro transit buses at the time simply relied on long single-sectioned buses for packed urban routes.

In all, a little over 200 buses were sold to transit systems in the U.S. including Portland, San Jose, Honolulu, Jacksonville, Oakland, Albany, Milwaukee, Houston and Louisville, in addition to Toronto and Ottawa, which had their own version of the 286 and in much larger numbers. Out of the U.S. cities, it was Portland that had the biggest fleet, with 87 buses purchased. Houston was next with 50 buses, while Milwaukee operated a fleet of 40. Most remained in operation through the late 1980s -- 1986 was the last year of production -- but a few stayed in service until the early 1990s.

A number of cities like Portland bought Ikarus buses in the mid-1980s, tailoring their looks to their own tastes. Steve Morgan

A quarter-century later, the Ikarus legacy in the U.S. is a mixed one. The 286s required a lot more maintenance than was expected, leading to significant parts of these bus fleets operating with no more than 3/4 of the buses running at any given time. Despite U.S. engines and transmissions, the bodies needed parts and service from Hungary. When it comes to large-capacity commuter buses, the Crown-Ikarus 280s' service lives were about average. Admittedly, it's hard to get a sense for their service record compared to other buses in city fleets -- what's clear is that the maintenance expectations of U.S. transit systems were less liberal than in countries that were the primary consumers of Ikarus buses -- which is our way of saying that 40-year-old Ikarus buses are still running around Eastern Europe and Central Asia held together with tape, wire and dodgy welding work. Meanwhile, ordering parts and servicing Hungarian buses in Oakland and Portland in the 1980s must have required a steep learning curve for all involved, especially given the fact that bus fleets had zero previous experience with Ikarus.

As for Ikarus itself, the collapse of the USSR effectively took out 80 percent of its client base overnight. Countries that had relied on Ikarus buses could no longer afford to buy new vehicles, and if they did, they bought used Volvo, Mercedes or MAN buses from Western Europe that had been written off due to mileage. Ikarus folded in 2003 after struggling for over a decade, ceding the passenger bus market to its Western European competitors.

But as an example of economic cooperation between the two superpowers during the second half of the 20th century, Ikarus buses remain the single largest non-passenger-car joint venture between a Soviet satellite state and the U.S. that actually resulted in the shipment of vehicles to the U.S.

Maintenance for Ikarus buses was a continuing issue for the cities operating them -- transit fleets had no experience working on them despite U.S. engines and gearboxes. Steve Morgan

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