Home » This Is The Weirdest Bus Ever Built And It’s Being Brought Back To Life So You Can Ride It

This Is The Weirdest Bus Ever Built And It’s Being Brought Back To Life So You Can Ride It

Big Weird Cityrama Bus Ts
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Most of the last 100 years’ rarest road-going vehicles are coachbuilt automobiles, bespoke one-offs, and ridiculously exclusive supercars you’ll almost certainly never see in real life. Unexpected among these rarest vehicles is the Citroën U55 Currus Cityrama, a double-decker bus that easily takes the crown of weirdest bus ever built. I mean, there’s not a single angle of this thing that doesn’t capture your attention. This beauty is the last of its kind and thankfully, an organization is putting it back together. One day, you might be able to join me in a journey through bus history.

Buses are reliable workhorses that don’t get as much credit as they should. Every day, countless examples of these metal tubes operate around the world getting people to work and back home again. Most of the time, the form of the bus closely follows its function, leading to some truly forgettable designs. Can you even picture what one of your local transit buses looks like? Ok, I can, but that’s because I’m solidly a nerd.

Vidframe Min Top
Vidframe Min Bottom

It wasn’t always this way. Several decades ago, buses were highly functional but they were also works of art in their own right. There are vintage buses that I’d rather look at over any Ferrari. The iconic GMC New Look fits into that category for me, though that might be my weirdness showing through.

Zazie dans le Métro/YouTube

When a bus tour company wanted to stand out in the competitive market of the 1950s, it made the bold move of commissioning custom buses that looked like nothing else on the road. The Citroën U55 Currus Cityrama was the result. It was a hit, but like most buses, it was seen simply as a tool of commerce, not a work of art or embodiment of history worth preserving. Once their service lives were over, the Cityrama buses were unceremoniously discarded. Somehow, just one example survived and is being restored in an ongoing, years-long process by a French historical society.

I first wrote about the bus in 2022 when the bus was still believed to have been lost. Then I wrote about it later that year when the bus was found. Now, we have great news as progress on its restoration is moving along.

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Normandy Classics

This update comes to us from one of my favorite YouTubers, The Tim Traveller. If you don’t know Tim, he’s a charming fellow who explores Europe for some of the weirdest and coolest transportation and culture artifacts. Sometimes his videos document the triumph of a soccer team with a multi-decade losing streak, some sweet French tunnels, or the largest vehicle ever built. His videos are short and are always worth a watch. In a way, Tim’s work reminds me of what YouTube used to be, you know, before the invasion of 30-minute videos where there’s only five minutes of real content.

Anyway, I’m getting beside myself here. Tim recently updated a lovely video detailing everything that’s happened to the weirdest bus in the world since it was found:

Why It’s So Weird

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I don’t blame you. It’s been nearly three years since we last had an update on the bus and I wouldn’t blame you for forgetting it even existed. Here’s some history from my last entry:

Back in the 1950s, Paris tour company Groupe Cityrama commissioned a fleet of wild buses. There’s little information out there about these buses, but the story is believed to go like this: Groupe Cityrama launched in 1956 as a tourism company in Paris, France. Paris tourism is highly competitive, so the company decided to go far out to get attention. Cityrama’s plan to be different was to have a fleet of distinctive sightseeing buses.

Zazie dans le Métro/YouTube

Under the massive glass greenhouses of these buses sat a Citroën Type 55 utility truck chassis. These workhorses featured either 4.6-liter gasoline sixes making 73 HP or 5.2-liter diesel sixes producing 86 HP. The Type 55 launched in 1953 and was produced all of the way to 1965. These trucks acted as platforms for fire engines, flatbeds and…five to ten strange sightseeing buses.

To bus-ify the Type 55, Cityrama took the truck chassis to Currus, a French coachbuilder. There, Currus built the incredible body that you see here on top of the humble Citroën trucks. As Tim originally noted, Currus had the challenge of making a double-decker bus that was both mostly glass and looked like nothing else.

Zazie dans le Métro/YouTube

What Currus built was nothing short of extraordinary. Just look at the Cityrama bus and you keep finding new and fascinating things about it. For example, take a look at the rear end and you’ll notice that it has giant tailfins like so many cars of the era. Yes, tailfins on a bus!

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Directly above the tailfins is a rounded observation area at the back of the bus and a red character line that starts up front and then terminates at the roof, almost resembling the handle of a basket.

Zazie dans le Métro/YouTube

Meanwhile, the front of the bus looks like the bow of a ship, and just above the first deck is a long spear. The rest of the bus is just two decks of metal and glass. Those on the upper deck not only got a better vantage point for sightseeing, but they also sat under a large glass canopy with a removable top.

Inside the Cityrama tour bus, up to 50 tourists could be provided headsets that broadcast commentary in a variety of languages. Now, these features aren’t all that special today when most tour buses are double-decker affairs with open tops, but this was pretty forward-thinking for the late 1950s.

Screenshot (1397)
The Tim Traveller/YouTube

The quirky bus was an instant hit, thrusting Cityrama’s status as the tour operator to go with if you went to Paris. Even when Cityrama picked up Saviem coaches beginning in 1960, the U55s remained highly popular. Everyone loved the U55s so much that they made appearances in French media, including French movie Zazie dans le Métro, where these sort of blurry screenshots originated.

Unfortunately, the unique design of these buses also led to some issues, reportedly. As noted by Tim and other sources, the buses had overheating problems and one even caught fire. Cityrama tried to fix the hot buses with the addition of a second grille, a third grille, and then an oil cooler. But as it turns out, the small and slow Citroën U55 just didn’t take well to being built into a glass monstrosity.

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Zazie dans le Métro/ouTube

Despite that, Cityrama managed to get over 20 years of use out of the buses, finally retiring them around 1980 or so. It’s now believed that only three buses were ever built. Of those, one was last seen working for a circus before it disappeared. Then there’s this one, which was the last one built in 1959. It was found in a very sorry state in 2022. A private owner saved the bus from the scrapper in the early 2000s, then hid the bus away for two decades before driving it out to a classic car meet in 2022. That’s right, it still ran and drove!

Sadly, this Cityrama bus has been through a lot. When it was found it was missing most of its windows, its body panels were falling off, the paint was a disaster, and the interior was a minefield of jagged edges just looking to cut you up. And yet, there was great news. The dilapidated Citroën bus went into the possession of the Association Normande d’Anciens Utilitaires, which figured the restoration would take four or five years.

Normandy Classics

Tim says the bus is currently in about 100 different pieces. The engine is sitting pretty in a corner, the steering gear is sitting on a shelf. Normandy Classics completely tore the bus down so every single part could be restored or replaced. In the video, a man named Jimmy explains that Normandy Classics bought a second engine for parts and used what they got from both engines to make one good engine. As Jimmy explains, the goal is to use as many original parts as possible. They’re not in the business of making an entirely new bus, after all.

Thankfully, the Citroën U55 was a common truck, making parts for the platform easier to find. What has been hard was all of the custom bits, so the body, windows, interior, and everything else. All of those parts were shuffled off to a warehouse a few kilometers away where the people of Normandy Classics have been toiling away at rebuilding the bus.

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The Tim Traveller/YouTube
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The Tim Traveller/YouTube

Tim notes that while Normandy Classics mentioned a timeline of four to five years, the restoration couldn’t actually begin until enough funds were raised to start the process. Sadly, this meant that the restoration didn’t even begin until fall 2023, which is why the bus doesn’t look very far along now.

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The shop explains that along with gutting the bus and inventorying the parts, it was also sanded down to bare metal. Any metal that can’t be saved due to rust will be cut out, with new pieces welded in. This process is more difficult than it appears, as the owner of Normandy Classics says that the upper deck structure has to come down before they go all Sawzall Hero on the rusted-out pieces of the lower deck.

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The Tim Traveller/YouTube
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The Tim Traveller/YouTube
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The Tim Traveller/YouTube

It’s noted that this sounds simple, but it really isn’t. The shop has to make sure the structure can support all of the weight of people, steel, and glass.

As of now, Normandy Classics has completed rebuilding the drivetrain and restoring the chassis. In addition to restoring the bus, the team hopes to make the bus better than new with modern rustproofing technology and improved engine cooling.

Screenshot (1394)
The Tim Traveller/YouTube

If you’re interested in watching the project’s progress, stop by the “Restoration of the U55 Currus Cityrama” Facebook page. If you want to donate, that page is here. As of publishing, the project has gathered over 91,000 Euros!

Hopefully, four or five years from now, the sole surviving Cityrama tour bus will be back on the road and carrying passengers once again. When that happens it will be a triumph. The bus will be over 70 years old and bringing people smiles once again. You can bet I’ll be there when it happens.

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Ed Dale
Ed Dale
30 days ago

I love The Tim Traveler youtube channel. So many cool places he visits.

Chronometric
Chronometric
30 days ago
Reply to  Ed Dale

Such a droll Brit (is that redundant?). Even the name of his channel is a bad pun. Love it.

Last edited 30 days ago by Chronometric
John Beef
John Beef
30 days ago

The first couple of times I saw “Cityrama” my brain registered “Chlamydia”. Now that I see them next to each other, they’re more different than I thought.

Cars? I've owned a few
Cars? I've owned a few
1 month ago

So, this was not the article I was really interested in, but the fact that you had all the bylines in the right half of the landing page for the website tonight, while you’re recovering from extensive oral surgery, is pretty dang amazing. Keep banging!

Gilbert Wham
Gilbert Wham
1 month ago

One and a half decker buses look so wild. I saw one in the UK in the early 90s. Wasn’t as cool as these ones though. Also, it had hippies living in it.

Aron9000
Aron9000
1 month ago

If they ever make another Cars movie, they HAVE TO make this wacky bus a character. Guess they can play into the wonky Parisian/French thing with that silly stereotype accent. Aka peppe le pew lol

Kevin Rhodes
Kevin Rhodes
1 month ago

Magnifique!

I would pay real money for a tour around Paris in that.

CSRoad
CSRoad
1 month ago

Mercedes, thanks for the further update.
I think what often sets this publication ahead of others is the depth and the willingness to return to the rabbit hole.
I’m glad the whole thing is being restored, the overstressed drivetrain is part of the story, oh so French and wonderful.

I figure the spear maybe used to gauge clearance somewhere in its travels.
The whole thing is max 1950’s helicopter bubble mixed with Vista Dome and quite wonderful.

StillNotATony
StillNotATony
1 month ago

After serving 30 years as a bus in Paris starting in the 50’s, I bet nicotine was a structural element by the time it was retired.

Kevin Rhodes
Kevin Rhodes
1 month ago
Reply to  StillNotATony

ROFL – Paris – “Would Monsieur and Madame prefer the smoking or CHAIN smoking section?”

Thankfully, not nearly so much anymore, at least indoors. Outdoors though, blech.

Ben
Ben
1 month ago
Reply to  Kevin Rhodes

I was in Europe recently and since it was a nice night I decided to sit outside at dinner. Big mistake. I was basically in the smoking section and had to inhale cigarette smoke for the duration of the meal.

Kevin Rhodes
Kevin Rhodes
1 month ago
Reply to  Ben

It’s interesting to me that as much as Europeans in general are more into health and fitness than Americans, they still smoke at much higher rates in many countries. The French smoking rate among adults is nearly 3X that of Americans. Germany and Spain are 2X+. The Scandanavians aren’t into it though.

I may be a fat bastard, but I have never smoked anything.

RoRoTheGreat
RoRoTheGreat
1 month ago
Reply to  Kevin Rhodes

Was just in Paris in June and can confirm. We hit Disneyland while there and that was mostly smoke free, fortunately.

Alan Christensen
Alan Christensen
1 month ago

I think the roof spear should be the next automotive styling trend.

Alan Christensen
Alan Christensen
1 month ago

Or, I guess if you’re a sailor it would be a bow sprint.

James Mason
James Mason
1 month ago

Bowsprit.

A bow sprint is what you do when trying to quickly drop your spinnaker on the deck without it falling into the water.

Last edited 1 month ago by James Mason
ADDvanced
ADDvanced
1 month ago

I feel like this is one of those projects where originality shouldn’t matter much, and they should have just scrapped that entire frame and drivetrain, and just swapped the body onto a modern chassis with more power, reliability, parts accessibility, etc. Nobody REALLY cares about the drivetrain, which seems like it was sort of garbage. They care about the body.

1978fiatspyderfan
1978fiatspyderfan
1 month ago

Modern traffic in the city of Paris? I’m guessing the heat problem was from sitting not moving too fast. Like NYC how fast does a car need to go to keep up? I’m guessing somewhere between maple syrup from a tree and a glacier.

Kevin Rhodes
Kevin Rhodes
1 month ago

You haven’t been to Paris, have you? A fit 3yo on a tricycle can go faster than traffic there. It’s like NYC, but with a lot more contact involved, and a lot fewer fucks given.

I will cheerfully drive in any European city as a rule. Rome, Naples, no problemo. Budapest with crazy Hungarians all around me? Perfectly fine, bring it on. Even London on the wrong side of the road in a wrong-side-drive car – no big, BTDT. In Paris, my car went into the hotel parking garage and did not leave until we did. Terrifying. Because they literally don’t care if they run into you.

Last edited 1 month ago by Kevin Rhodes
Lotsofchops
Lotsofchops
1 month ago
Reply to  ADDvanced

Well the people doing this are a sort of vehicle historical society, AKA the type to REALLY care about the original drivetrain.

ADDvanced
ADDvanced
1 month ago
Reply to  Lotsofchops

But it was shit. They’re restoring shit. The BODY is what makes this bus cool. I guarantee you there are 1000 other buses with this same drivetrain that nobody is restoring because the body is boring.

Hangover Grenade
Hangover Grenade
1 month ago
Reply to  ADDvanced

I’d agree except that this is literally the only one left.

I’m all for weird body swaps, but not in historically significant cases.

ADDvanced
ADDvanced
1 month ago

It’s the only one left of this body. The frame and drivetrain is likely common to lots of buses and old garbage. Which again.. isn’t important.

Widgetsltd
Widgetsltd
1 month ago
Reply to  ADDvanced

Your proposed body swap onto a modern chassis might make sense if the old chassis were junk but the body was decent. This project has the opposite situation: the old chassis was pretty solid (which is why they were able to restore it in less than a year) but the body’s condition is near-junk.

Last edited 1 month ago by Widgetsltd
Bram Oude Elberink
Bram Oude Elberink
1 month ago
Reply to  ADDvanced

With this project I could not disagree more. It is the last one of only three ever existed remaining, the sole purpose of the restauration is to preserve history, including all the flaws and limitations of technology of the period it was built in. I also think this bus will maybe do the occasional run once in a while, but it will not be used for commercial use for tourists. For that I would build a replica, and that you can stick on a more modern chassis.

D-dub
D-dub
1 month ago

The body is worth restoring for sure, but are they really going to restore the original underpowered drivetrain? If ever a restomod makes sense, it’s for a bus.

ADDvanced
ADDvanced
1 month ago
Reply to  D-dub

lol, I just wrote the same comment above yours.

Flashman
Flashman
1 month ago

Never mind overheating the engine, what about overheating the passengers? It looks like everyone will just roast in there.
I used one of those open-topped hop on hop off buses in Havana a couple of years ago; at first everybody crowded the top deck with the 360 view but soon enough pretty much everyone had retreated to the shady lower level

1978fiatspyderfan
1978fiatspyderfan
1 month ago
Reply to  Flashman

I am sure they can go original plus

Phuzz
Phuzz
1 month ago

Last time this was featured I felt moved to chuck them a few Euros, glad to see they’ve gone to a good cause 🙂

Urban Runabout
Urban Runabout
1 month ago

That’s the most awesome bus I’ve seen yet – and Paris is the one city it works in because no overhead cables, traffic lights, etc.

Trevlington
Trevlington
1 month ago

The tour bus from one of my favorite films being restored just outside one of my favorite towns. What’s not to like. To me, this sort of vehicle was how I always imagined Paris, because I had only seen the city in old pictures and guide books when I was young.

Hugh Crawford
Hugh Crawford
1 month ago

“5.2-liter diesel sixes producing 86 HP.” That sounds like about enough for the air conditioner.

DONALD FOLEY
DONALD FOLEY
1 month ago
Reply to  Hugh Crawford

What air conditioner?

Electronika
Electronika
30 days ago
Reply to  Hugh Crawford

Wow! I bet it was one slow sob.

Dodsworth
Dodsworth
1 month ago

Oh my Lord. I would give them $100 just to drive it for one mile. There’s a money making opportunity for them and charity.

1978fiatspyderfan
1978fiatspyderfan
1 month ago
Reply to  Dodsworth

Says the Ferrari technician driving the 403 yesterday story

Dodsworth
Dodsworth
1 month ago

Ya know, your Fiat Spyder needs a test drive.

Cool Dave
Cool Dave
1 month ago

Someone needs to make an RV version..

Canopysaurus
Canopysaurus
1 month ago

Somewhere in my attic there are a couple of washed out Kodacolor prints of my parents taking a tour through Paris on a Currus Cityrama bus while attending a conference in 1968. My mother recalls it was pretty warm under all of that glass on the day they toured. Otherwise, she quite enjoyed the experience.

Kleinlowe
Kleinlowe
1 month ago
Reply to  Canopysaurus

You might consider putting those online if you ever find them! Especially with poorly-documented historic vehicles like this, there’s the chance they may have accidentally gotten a picture of some bolt or bracket or trim piece that has otherwise vanished into memory and oxides.

DriveSheSaid
DriveSheSaid
1 month ago

I can see Willy Wonka and co tooling around in one of these!

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