Time Capsule: An Express Retro-Test of the Ikarus-255 Bus with an Unusual Destiny

The Raba diesel chuffs out Euro-0 exhaust, and I feel like a student taking his bus driver’s test on the training ground again. I creep around the depot, make a reverse turn, feel for the gears with the long shift lever, and guide the Ikarus carefully through the doors of the paint shop for a respray.

Driving an Ikarus, Twenty Years On

Before this I had driven an intercity Ikarus exactly once, back in 2001. At that time Ikaruses all over the country were being fitted with domestic engines to replace the worn-out Hungarian originals: some took YaMZ diesels from MAZ and KrAZ trucks, others went as far as tank engines from Barnaul. But a firm in Naberezhnye Chelny called Kora installed a KAMAZ powertrain, the plant being conveniently next door. Making the bulky V8 diesel fit meant cutting the frame and building a large housing that intruded into the passenger cabin, and the gearshift was dreadful — I could barely find the gears at all. When you are desperate, though, even a bus like that will do.

This Ikarus shifts distinctly better, although the poker of a lever and the long linkage rods running to the rear are quite a combination. The pattern is roughly that of the LAZ-695N, which is to say reversed: first is right and back, second is straight forward, and so on.

A Time Capsule From 1977

The engine, like everything else, is original: a 140-horsepower horizontal Raba-MAN six, sitting at the back. More to the point, the original interior has survived, and this particular bus was built in 1977. It is a time capsule — or rather an Ikapsula.

How does a bus of nearly fifty survive in this state? Because for a large part of its life it simply never left the garage. The story goes that a Soviet minister arrived in Murmansk with his entourage and was given a PAZ minibus to ride in. The minister was furious, so for his later visits this Ikarus was produced — reportedly taken straight off the stand at Moscow’s VDNKh. The exhibition origins show in the unusual light-beige seat upholstery and in the Ikarus logo embossed on the steering wheel, which is a rare thing to find.

Later the bus worked at the port of Murmansk, ferrying power plant employees, and it has now made it to St Petersburg under its own power without a single breakdown.

The collection of St Petersburg’s retro-bus mafia already runs to a dozen touring Ikaruses of the 200 series. I photographed two of them on the grounds of the Center of Leningrad Automotive History museum. One, a 12-metre Ikarus-250, is heavy luxury in the truest sense: Sovtransavto logos under the windows, homemade flip-down plexiglass headlight covers — fitted not for looks but to keep stones off the imported lenses — and a charming external thermometer on the A-pillar. Beside it stands a shorter, 11-metre Ikarus-256.

It Says 260 on the Grille

The grille of the bus in question, though, carries the index 260. Weren’t the Ikarus-260 models for city use? The explanation is simple: this is an Ikarus-255 — a 255.70, to be exact — and somebody in the past replaced its missing badge with another one. This model is also 11 metres long, like the later Ikarus-256, but it rides on leaf springs rather than air.

Leaf-sprung Ikaruses were plainly less comfortable, so they tended to work short intercity routes, or run around cities carrying foreign tourists and airline passengers. What they were valued for was indestructibility: a leaf spring might sag under a hard life but it kept working, whereas an airbag could deflate altogether. Against the 250, the 255 stacked up like this:

• Top speed: 100 km/h, against the 250’s 106 km/h
• Official fuel consumption: 28.5 l/100km, against 26.5 l/100km
• Suspension: leaf springs instead of air
• Production: 24,196 built from 1969 to 1982, of which 16,219 went to the USSR

Fifty Years of Wear

Nearly fifty years is a long time even for a machine as well preserved as this. The paint is flaking in places — the bus has been repainted three times and ended up in a non-standard livery — there are rust streaks here and there, the engine cover is jammed shut, and the rear axle has shifted slightly out of position. But the interior trim, as I say, is almost all there, all 45 passenger seats of it, with net luggage racks under the ceiling.

Opposite the doors are folding seats: a two-seater at the rear and a single one for a guide at the front. On the dashboard is a plaque reading “Mogurt, Hungarian Foreign Trade Enterprise for Motor Vehicles.” The bard Yuri Vizbor once sang about riding the metro to Shchyolkovskaya, catching a bus from there, and carrying home six kilos of Globus vegetable conserves in a string bag. The Globus green peas were imported from Hungary too.

At the Wheel

The driver faces a woodgrain dashboard, a powerful heater under the seat, massive floor-mounted pedals and large instrument dials. In the middle of the cluster on the left is a bright red warning light, which comes on if the engine oil pressure or the air pressure in the brake circuits falls too low. On the same dial is a second red light, for alternator load. A dim glow meant the charging system had failed; a blaze meant the current limiter had tripped, and then you had to shut the engine down and toggle the master switch — reboot the system, in modern terms. If that did not help, you cleaned the battery terminals.

The engine is started by turning a starter handle next to the ignition key. And the handbrake? Between the seat and the left side panel. I did not find it at first.

By the time this article went to press the St Petersburg Ikarus-255 had come out of the paint shop, repainted — losing its unusual livery, sadly, and returning to the classic scarlet top over a white bottom.

Where the Other Ikaruses Are

Touring Ikaruses have survived elsewhere in the country, of course. I recently spotted an apparently intact 256 beside a cafe on the Kazan–Naberezhnye Chelny highway, which houses a museum of Soviet artifacts and shows various retro vehicles. This 1987 example used to carry employees of the Kazan Elekon factory — the one that made the model KAMAZ trucks and other miniatures — and then stood on a city street for a long time. Judging by the gutted interior, now filled with stored tables and chairs, the plan is to turn it into a summer veranda.

And one last thing. At the InnoTrans passenger transport exhibition held recently in Berlin, electric Ikarus buses were on show. Has the brand been revived? Yes — but in much the same way as Moskvich: as we have reported before, today’s Ikaruses are Chinese vehicles assembled in small batches in a small workshop.

Perusing an Old Manual

In front of me is a book published in 1987: Operation and Repair of Ikarus Buses, translated from Hungarian. As it states, this was the first — and apparently the only — publication of its kind in the country, because in twenty years of Ikarus deliveries to the USSR, starting in 1967, no reference literature of the sort had appeared in Russian. And yet, by the same book’s account, the lion’s share of Ikarus’s output — 10,000 vehicles out of 13,000 a year — was destined specifically for the Soviet Union.

What the Preface Left Out

The preface to the Russian edition carries an interesting note: “Material on the Praga 2M.70 hydromechanical transmission (HMT) has been omitted, since buses supplied to the USSR are equipped with the Lviv-3 HMT, which has significant differences.” It also states that “the factory has begun installing front axles of Soviet production, received under COMECON cooperation” — those came from LiAZ.

Adapting to Soviet Reality

Ikaruses were very high-tech products by the standards of the country at the time and needed particular care in service and repair. That went for the diesels with their precise injection equipment — Soviet LAZ and LiAZ buses of those years ran on petrol — as well as for the air suspension and the pneumatic system in general. Ikaruses were fitted with injection pumps from six different makers, in Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and West Germany.

And a good deal had to be adapted at repair time. Instead of the Rocol grease the book specifies, Litol-24 was prescribed; instead of imported Molard paste and YVS oil, proletarian solidol. It is unlikely the USSR had any official Palmarapid glue for repairing the articulation bellows of the accordion buses either. And, as the book says, “there is currently no major overhaul for Ikarus buses in the USSR.” How that squared with delivery volumes on that scale remains a mystery.

Photo: Fedor Lapshin
This is a translation. You can read the original article here: Икапсула времени: экспресс-ретротест автобуса Ikarus-255 с необычной судьбой