Flyer 700/800/900 series

The Flyer 700/800/900 series were a series of transit buses built in three generations by Western Flyer and its successors Flyer Industries and New Flyer, of Canada, between 1967 and 1987. Except for brief overlap during transition from one generation to the next, they were not in production concurrently. All individual model designations included a prefix of either D, for diesel propulsion, or E, for electrically powered trolleybuses, with the first digit indicating the generation and the last digit indicating a variant within the generation. The introductory model was the D700, originally released in 1967 for the Canadian transit market, and the last series group to be produced, D900 (and variant D901), was discontinued in 1987. Flyer had become New Flyer only the year before, in 1986.

The D700 was the first transit bus released by Western Flyer, which previously had manufactured exclusively suburban over-the-road coaches until then. It closely resembled the contemporaneous and popular GM New Look bus, including the multi-pane "fishbowl"-style windshield and parallelogram-shaped side windows. The D700 subsequently was licensed to AM General in 1970 for sales to American transit operators; AM General modified the exterior design with rectangular side windows and sold it as the AM General Metropolitan starting in 1974. Flyer later adopted the exterior changes made by AM General and sold the bus as the second-generation D800 and E800. The D900 was the third generation of the design, and is distinguished by a simpler windshield. Versions of each generation were also available in both diesel and trolleybus form.