In the news

The new Routemaster mock-up - already The Guardian are giving it a kicking, below;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/11/new-routemaster-bus-design-cacophony

I think though that from behind(ish), as in the shot here, it looks very good - and the 23 is my local route

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2010/nov/11/boris-johnson-unveils-london-bus

Fucking hate the way new design gets slagged off in this country. Looks fine to me.

The Routemaster was a design classic, but I bet it wouldn't have been perceived as one when first launched. On a merely visual level, I certainly think it looks a lot better than the new version. I don't disagree with a lot of what Jonathan Glancey writes, except that I think the speculation about the reference to 'pirates' is either tongue-in-cheek or very far-fetched:

But, the way the body appears to have two skins, with the second looking like a skirt cut on an exaggerated bias, is fussy; from the front, the new Routemaster looks as if it's wearing an eyepatch, a knowing reference perhaps to the days, a century ago, when fiercely deregulated London buses raced one other dangerously to pick up passengers, and were known as "pirates".

The zig-zag effect of the glass lighting the forward stair is also fussy; as this is on one side only, the new bus is as wilfully asymmetrical as a deconstructivist building by Daniel Libeskind. The prominent and shiny hubcaps are a bit bling – as if from a pantomime pirate's costume – while, inside, the seat coverings look as if they have been designed with Bridget Riley in one of the artist's more challenging moments. Too many swirls.

At its best – from 1910 to 1970 – a true London bus was a fine balance between a workaday functional tool, designed for a long and hard life, and a machine of quietly resolved and understated elegance. Distinctive, it was never showy. There is still time for Heatherwick, TfL and Wrightbus to cut down on the number of notes played on this mock-up and to shape a fashion-free bus that might yet serve London for several post-Olympic generations.

I certainly agree that the rear doesn't look that bad:

Problems, in my view, are that 'swirl', which does look like design for the sake of design to me, and no upstairs rear window. This side of the bus looks very good, I think. Simple and unshowy.

However, I also agree with JG that the front still needs a good deal of work:

It'll be interesting whether the windows alongside the stairs will work. Those actually surprised me, as I would have thought that they would get in the way of advertising on the side of the bus. The whole lower front half of the 'face' of the bus I think is a complete miss. One of the main strengths of a Routemaster was that it had a pretty and friendly 'face':

The new bus just doesn't. It's completely bland. And, yes, I do think it's important for a car to have a nice 'face'. It's always fascinated me how we have for a long time built cars with two 'eyes', a 'nose', and often a 'mouth', too. :)

As the history of the Routemaster shows, the appearance of the new bus will probably continue to be tweaked over the years, and certainly between now and the finished model let's hope that some of the weaknesses are addressed.