VIDEO The story of “Rata”, the Roman Diesel 111 bus that transported Romania for decades

Unbearable smell of hot brake drums, mixed with the “flavor” of burnt diesel, unbearable heat in the summer, especially in the back seats, above the poorly insulated engine, cold in the winter, due to the undersized heating/ventilation system and which it always breaks down, swings and pitches on almost any more pronounced bump, due to the suspension on air cushions of poor quality, but, probably, for many, also a “generator” of many beautiful memories.

This is how “Rata” can be briefly characterized, the Roman Diesel 111 bus, produced by the Bucharest Bus Enterprise from 1978 to 1994, in various versions.

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The story of “Rata”, the Roman Diesel 111 bus that transported Romania for decades

From the 1950s until 1990, Uzinele Tudor Vladimirescu, then Întreprindea Autobuzul București and Rocar SA, were the only supplier in Romania of vehicles for transporting people and light goods vehicles. City halls or the Ministry of Defense, for example, had no alternative to buy something else, so the results of the factory were “successful”.

From 1978 and a few years after the Revolution, for example, the Roman Diesel 111 bus, “Rata” as many Romanians over 40 know it, was omnipresent on intercity transport routes, being used from the bus for school trips to to the vehicle for the transport of the military.

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The legendary “Duck” Roman Diesel 111 was a model produced according to the communist recipe, under license, based on the German MAN 535 HO bus, produced between 1962 and 1969, with locally made parts of questionable quality.

One of the great vulnerabilities of the “Rata” was the airbags that would burst, either due to “quality” or overload, fine from a compound cause. The problem was that the bus brakes were also pneumatic and used the same air, so when a cushion broke, the brakes would also lock.

The Roman Diesel 111 bus, with a length of 11.36 meters, a width of 2.5 meters, a height of 2.95 meters and a wheelbase of 5.75 meters, was equipped with a MAN D-2165 HM 81 diesel engine U, with a power of 192 horses, located in the back, and with a synchronized manual gearbox, with 5+1 steps, which helped it reach, theoretically, a maximum speed of 110 km/h.

The transport capacity of the intercity bus was 70 passengers, of which 43 on seats, and the “coach” version offered 56 seats on seats.

The Roman Diesel 111 bus had a weight of 9.35 tons and a payload of 5.65 tons, the total authorized weight of the vehicle being 15 tons.

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From the 1950s until 1990, Autobuzul was the only supplier of passenger transport vehicles in Romania

The Tudor Vladimirescu factories appeared in the early 1950s, with the aim of producing plows and seed drills, but after the success of the first Romanian bus, “MTD” (from Mao Tze Dun, it was made at the Vulcan factory. The bus was built on the SR truck chassis 101 and had an average transport capacity of 60 passengers), from 1955 they were reprofiled into transport and utility vehicles.

The first models that came out of the factory gates were the TV trolleybuses and TV vans, with “TV” from “Tudor Vladimirescu”. In 1958, at the Tudor Vladimirescu factory, the production of TV-4 and TV-5 vehicles, intended for the transport of passengers and goods, based on the IMS M-461 (ARO) model, with various bodies: minibus, van, van, self-sanitary, etc. They were equipped with a 50-horsepower IMS engine, and from 1964 they switched to more powerful 70-horsepower engines in the TV-41 and TV-51 cases, for example.

In particular, the TV12, TV14C, TV15C, TV14, TV35, TV41 utility vehicles made at the Tudor Vladimirescu Factories were exported at that time to socialist countries such as Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary and Poland, as well as to South America.

In the 1970s, “Autobuzul” took a RABA-MAN license, for the manufacture of buses and coaches, and in the late 1970s and in the 1980s it produced articulated vehicles (buses and trolleybuses), various coaches, minibuses, midibuses, but also a number of prototypes that never went into production.