The New Look Bus was the face of North American public transit in the latter half of the 20th century, with almost 45,000 built between 1959 and 1986. Everyone remembers the New Look, also known as the "Fishbowl" Bus. Amazingly, for a bus that had such an enormous impact on the urban fabric of our towns and cities, there have been surprisingly few models made of it.

The existing models - in 1/50 and 1/87 - suffer from serious dimensional flaws. The real New Look Bus was all about curves. The body cross section is fairly "tubular" with a pronounced curve to the whole side. The windows, similarly, are not straight. The ends have very distinct curves throughout. Yet every model to date has these areas dead straight. It means that the existing models were designed from rough two-dimensional plans and not from real blueprints.

We went one step further than real blueprints. As we showed in our video, A New Look for Rapido, we actually did a 3D scan of a real New Look Bus. And then we shrunk it to HO scale. We can thus honestly say that the Rapido New Look Bus is the only New Look Bus model that is the correct shape. Our first release is based on a T6H-5307N with double-stream rear exit doors. But we plan to do more versions in the future.

NEW LOOK BUS MODEL FEATURES

All of our New Look Bus models include:

• Correct tubular profile
• Full interior including separate seats with seatback handrails and grooved flooring
• Etched-metal interior stanchions and stamped-metal handrail
• Steerable front wheels
• Rubber tires
• Printed "metal" window frames
• Printed windshield gaskets (silver or black, as appropriate)
• Double-stream rear exit doors (first time ever in a mass-produced New Look model!)
• Three kinds of bumper (steel, water jug and rubber - and we mean REAL rubber!)
• Standee windows or sheet metal panel as appropriate
• Optional air conditioning housing with etched-metal fan cover
• Optional etched-metal advertisement frames
• Optional rear window air intakes and high level exhaust
• Optional roof hatches, Sinclair antenna, microwave antenna, and cellular/Wi-Fi antenna
• Multiple route/destination decals

Some liveries include licence plate decals.

Our Deluxe New Look Bus includes all of the above, plus:

Interior lighting

• Working headlights and tail lights
• Illuminated front destination sign
• Painted seatback handrails
• Two-tone seats (where appropriate)

A 12V DC power supply is required to power the lighting (not included). 

We are also selling some parts separately for you to upgrade your other bus models, including bus lighting kits, bus and truck wheels, and bumpers. Visit our bus parts page for full info.