It was an early morning—5 a.m. I left home to catch the 8:00 flight to Busan.
Today’s destination: Daewoo Bus Co. in Dongnae, and Jeil Transportation in Masan.
I’d always wanted to visit Daewoo’s bus plant, and this trip was also a chance to check out Jeil’s CNG buses equipped with Allison automatic transmissions.

We’ve seen automatic transmissions on city buses in Seoul before, but Jeil’s buses are among the newest models — and possibly the first CNG buses with automatics in Korea. Jeil claims their automatics outperform manuals in fuel economy and brake lining wear. I wanted to see if that was true.

The photo on the left shows a CNG tank. The middle bus is destined for Geumnam Passenger Co. in Jeju, and the view on the right is the factory yard as seen from the office.
There were many buses waiting for domestic delivery, but most of what stood out were export models headed overseas.

The BH120E model, fitted with leaf springs and measuring 12 meters long, is bound for Saudi Arabia. It’s a special model built for pilgrimage transport, with a removable roof so passengers can look up at the sky during the trip.
Inside, the roof can be lifted simply by loosening a few bolts — an impressive bit of design.

The BF106 model is also going to Saudi Arabia, this time as a school bus.

At first glance it looks like a lower-end bus, but the safety systems are actually excellent — perhaps better than some of our domestic models. There’s a lot we could learn from this kind of foreign approach that prioritizes safety.

This photo shows the BH120HD, equipped with so-called “rabbit-ear” side mirrors designed to minimize blind spots.

We’ll take a closer look at the BH120HD next.

The BH120HD gave me a brief but clear sense of how Korea’s bus design culture was evolving.
The image on the right shows the roof-mounted emergency exit — essential if the bus ever rolls over.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time to look around in detail, and the BH120SHD was already loaded on a ship, so I couldn’t see that one.

How do we get rid of the old prejudice that automatic transmissions are “fuel wasters”?

Seeing is believing—so I went straight to Jeil Transportation in Masan to find out.

They told me they’ve really benefited from using automatics. That confidence led them to install Allison automatic transmissions even on their latest CNG buses.

“Back in the 1990s, mechanical automatics weren’t fuel-efficient. But everything’s now electronic, and performance has improved dramatically. The Allison B300R model has a built-in retarder, and since we switched from mechanical to electronic systems, durability has increased a lot. Fuel economy didn’t improve that much, but the brake lining life did — about five times longer than manual buses. With manuals, we replaced linings every two months; with the B300R, about every ten months. Our newer B400 model doesn’t have a retarder but offers almost the same fuel economy as a manual. Thanks to its built-in Pre-Down Selector, we only change linings every four to five months.”

Jeil plans to purchase another four or five automatic-transmission buses soon. They told me confidently, “Now we’re fully convinced automatics are the way forward.”

In the past, automatics were often blamed for high fuel consumption. Many were converted back to manuals or retired early.
But now, in 2003, technology has advanced—and the old prejudice still lingers mostly in people’s minds.

• Fuel economy: same
• Brake lining life: +
• Driver comfort: +
• Passenger comfort: +
• Lower accident risk: +
• Initial purchase cost: –

So the positives clearly outweigh the negatives.
Even without crunching numbers, Jeil’s decision to expand its automatic fleet—and their statement that they’ll use only automatics from now on—pretty much says it all.