Hong Kong Pilots Restore a Memory on Wheels: A Vintage Double-Decker Bus

HONG KONG — Pedestrians stopped in their tracks and stared. Passengers in vehicles craned their necks and waved. Schoolboys in uniform ran like paparazzi angling for the perfect shot. They were all riveted by a cream-colored double-decker bus with ketchup-red trims on the top and bottom swerving last month into an open-air terminal.

Vintage buses of this variety, nicknamed “hot dog buses” for their lack of air conditioning, have not picked up passengers on the streets of Hong Kong for a decade. But this soot-streaked double-decker with missing panels and a rusty engine had been lovingly restored and is owned by two pilots, Luca Tong and Kobee Ko, who have never outgrown their childhood passion for buses.

When the coronavirus pandemic grounded the global aviation industry and cut their flight hours, the pilots — used to steering more sophisticated machinery at 600 miles per hour while cruising in the skies — pooled their savings to refurbish the hot dog bus. To them, it was a physical manifestation of their youth in the 1980s and ’90s, before pandemic restrictions and a sweeping political crackdown gripped the city.

“Back then, there was freedom, money and a whole lot of warmth,” Mr. Tong, 35, said last month. “The bus has the feeling of Hong Kong at that time, but that feeling is disappearing from Hong Kong.”

The bus was among a fleet of 369 introduced in 1986 and retired in 2012. Made by Britain’s Alexander Dennis for Hong Kong’s Kowloon Motor Bus Company under the moniker Dennis Dragon, the vehicles were originally designed to fit air-conditioning units at the back window. But they were never installed because it would have cost more to ride an air-conditioned bus.

And so the hot dog buses trundled along for another quarter of a century. With the introduction of air-conditioned subway trains and 14-seater minibuses in the city, commuters came to prefer more comfortable conditions during Hong Kong’s hot, sticky summers. One by one, hot dog buses, with their windows that slid open to let in the breeze, were replaced by newer models with sealed windows and powerful air-conditioning.

Danny Chan, a former transportation journalist who co-founded the Hong Kong Transport Society in 1989, said that for obsessives, the appeal of buses lay in memorizing quotidian details like bus routes and schedules, specifications and models.

“Every bus ride becomes a treat,” he said. “You get to anticipate the interesting things you will come across on the bus.”

Many enthusiasts collect miniatures of bus models or ones tricked out with parts that could be maneuvered via remote control. Others like to photograph buses debuting or retiring. When the remaining hot dog buses owned by the K.M.B. completed their final rotation on May 8, 2012, throngs of cheering fans waved farewell with smartphones and camcorders held aloft.

But Mr. Tong and Mr. Ko could not wave their passion goodbye.

“Not many people will keep memories physically rather than taking videos or photos,” Mr. Ko, 32, said. “Our memory is one that can move.”

He grew up watching his father drive trucks and minibuses, deftly weaving the large vehicles in and out of…