This 50-year-old bus is the most captivating vehicle I’ve experienced all year

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As we approach the intersection, people at a TTC stop glance up and start idly drifting toward the curb. They don’t think this is their bus, do they? We continue minding our own business and chattering about nerd hobbies, because surely they won’t actually try to get on…

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It’s a Tuesday morning, and I’m sitting shotgun in a 1967 General Motors New Look Bus. Though it wears the agency’s historic colours, it bears no TTC logos or official insignia. It’s the hobby runabout of model train mogul Jason Shron, and we’re meandering through the city finding spots for photos. 

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Affectionately known as the ‘Fishbowl’ for its distinctive bulged windshield, this bus looks nothing like those in service today. It’s a half-century old, the colours are dated, and the route sign shows ‘Exhibition,’ for goodness’ sake. It bears no piercing blue lights, isn’t stopping at actual stops, and come on — this clearly isn’t the bus you’re looking for. 

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And yet the gaggle of commuters determinedly follows as we coast beyond the stop and up to the red light, the leader tapping their transfer against the glass of the closed door. 

“Your bus is just behind — no, no, I’m sorry sir, but this isn’t a TTC bus.” 

The person looks annoyed, but eventually shrugs and backs away. I’m incredulous; surely this is just a one-off? And so began one of my oddest days out on the town. 

Few would bat an eye at the notion of driving a classic car for fun, but a classic bus? One of those things Weird Al used as a pretext to improve a classic Queen song ? Why? What do you do with it? Where do you find one? How is that fun? As it turns out, there are a lot of answers to all of these questions. 

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Jason Shron runs Rapido Trains , a high-end producer of Canadian-oriented model trains and accessories. A lifelong railroad and transit aficionado (the two typically go hand-in-hand), Jason had longed for a New Look bus since he was in high school. After aborting his PhD studies in England to pursue the model train business, he finally had a reasonable pretext to realize a big part of his dream. 

Jason’s bus is a General Motors TDH-5303, identifying it as a Transit Bus, Diesel, Hydraulic Transmission, 53-seat capacity, Series 03. Built in London, ON in 1967, it spent its first 20 years in the service of Calgary Transit, followed by 30 years with a private carrier called Pacific Western Transportation. After one more year in the private hands of a retired PWT driver, Jason was led to it and agreed to its purchase in 2016. 

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After having it mechanically restored and repainted in classic TTC colours there in Calgary, Jason drove it back across the Prairies with PR Minion Jordan Smith (with us for our outing) and Product Designer Dan Darnell. Since then, “3380” has become a cherished toy for Jason and a popular promotional tool for the company. 

It may offer the luxury of an automatic transmission, but this 1967 New Look has no power steering. With a steering wheel that rotates for 22 muscle-straining turns from lock to lock (your car’s probably turns 3), this 40-foot long, ten-tonne behemoth is hardly a breeze around town. Speed-sapping hills have to be planned for, and other motorists’ unpredictability demands constant vigilance. Driving this bus takes work, but the payoff is the coalescence of pure joy. 

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I thought DeLoreans got a big reaction, but the New Look is something else. Jason’s bus is an interactive artefact, purposeful and hardy, yet heartwarming and welcoming. The Rapido logo on the side evokes classic TTC branding, and overhead signs show Rapido models and milestones — all with Rapido’s signature brand of dad-humour dressed up in period design. 

People love seeing this bus. Every time we stopped, Torontonians took photos and smiled as they related their memories to Jason and Jordan. Parked near Bathurst Station, a group of young skaters flocked and asked to climb aboard for a photo in the back. Though they may have been too small to have personal memories of Toronto’s New Looks when the last few reserve buses were retired in 2011, the Fishbowl’s classic charm splashes a certain otherworldliness against the banality of modern traffic. With a skateboard under each of their arms, they filed in cinematically and grinned for their disposable film camera. 

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It may be ‘just a bus’, but there’s no denying the cool factor here. The midcentury bus’s Googie starburst headliner hearkens back to the era’s space-age ambition, and sculpted, jet-like exterior features warp back to when even the most pedestrian industrial design carried social connotations.

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The reminders aren’t all rosy, granted. It’s a mercifully mild day, but it takes little imagination to appreciate how riders of yore would have relied on the large, opening side windows before the proliferation of air conditioning. Skipping across heaved Toronto asphalt, the harshness of the ride on Earthly roadways also calls appreciation to the relative comfort of modern designs. 

More glaring is the matter of accessibility, one whose North American emphasis only ramped up in earnest with the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. This was the beginning of the end for high-floor vehicles like the New Look, as manufacturers reoriented to comply with the US market’s newly-mandated need for low-floor accessibility. Until then, however, those with limited mobility or using wheelchairs were largely neglected in transit considerations — and all of the socio-economic opportunities that public transit afforded the rest of the populace. It’s easy to romanticize the technologies of yore, but to be sure, by the 1990s the high-floored New Look had worn out its welcome.

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As a pleasure vehicle, though, the New Look is in a league of its own. Where an old Camaro might tickle the nostalgia of just those few whose uncles or neighbours had one back in the day , the New Look was a daily part of millions of lives over half of a century. It’s a nostalgic touchstone that you don’t realize you appreciate — until very suddenly, you do. 

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At one point during our journey, the driver of an empty on-duty TTC bus parked up behind us to come out and enthuse. With an “oh my god” at every exhale, they recounted starting off driving tired New Looks in the 1990s, and how seeing Jason’s bus took them back to those younger days. Near the verge of delighted tears, the driver climbed up behind the massive steering wheel and pointed to the antiquated controls with glee. Before heading back to their own seat, Jason pulled out a 1/87 scale model of his exact bus as a parting gift. 

Asked whether such emotional exchanges were a regular part of his experience with 3380, Jason answered with pause: “that — that one was special.”

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