AEC’s history is way marked by seemingly contrasting classes, from passenger transport, to heavy-duty military applications and then the very core of general haulage – particularly with eight wheelers – and the move into artics, before being swallowed up by British Leyland.
The London General Omnibus Company (LGOC) which had been founded in 1855 to amalgamate and regulate the horse-drawn omnibus began producing motor omnibuses for its own use in 1909 with the X-type. In 1912, LGOC was taken over by the Underground Group of companies, and as part of the reorganisation a separate concern was set up for the bus manufacturing elements, and was named Associated Equipment Company.
AEC’s first commercial vehicle was a Y-type lorry, based on the X-type bus chassis. With the outbreak of World War I, AEC›s ability to produce large numbers of vehicles using moving-track assembly lines, based on American principles, became important in supplying the increasing need for army lorries. AEC commenced large-scale production of their three-ton Y-type lorry in 1916, and by the end of the First World War, over 9,000 Y-type lorries were manufactured. From then on, AEC became associated with both lorries and buses while in 1932, AEC took a controlling interest in the British subsidiary of the American Four
