Justin McGuirk hops on board for a first look at Thomas Heatherwick’s state-of-the-art redesign of the classic bus.

The concept designer of the new bus is Thomas Heatherwick, working closely with Wrightbus, its manufacturer. When he appeared on the scene in the late 1990s he was instantly cast as a British engineering genius, the creator of weird, wonderful structures such as the UK pavilion for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.