I find that the past popularity of Leylands mainly due not to
any superior technical capabilities of their vehicles but more to
'politics' of the time whereby Britain & British colonies (like
Hong Kong) were 'forced' to buy British, despite the obvious fact
that many non-British makes then (now even of course) were superior
to the old British junkies ! I believe that if left more to the
free market to decide like many of the other makes, Leyland would
have disappeared much sooner.
In theory, i agree that putting the radiator up front can make
cooling easier & more direct but then there's been so many
buses & coaches over the past 20 years with rear engines yet no
radiator up front yet somehow these survive, whether in Europe,
Singapore or Brazil etc., so there's tropical as well as cold
climates.
For tranverse rear-engine buses, the Scanias have long existed with
radiator even intercooler on the sides in the rear.
I notice that in the earlier Volvo B10M's, the radiator's up front
but the later versions the radiator put along the sides, like most
rear engined buses.
Unfortunately some such units of B10M's i note also has such noisy
fans which sounds so much noisier both inside & outside than
the engine itself !
As for Hydracyclic created in 1975, the O 305 existed since 1967
& the level of engineering like air-suspension & their much
smoother & better performing push-button automatic gearbox etc.
to me i find it still superior in technical advancement.
The Olympians are the better lot among Leylands, maybe the National
slightly better. But i'll say comparing to non-British makes, these
British products are overall still inferior & backward. So the
gradual demise of the British automotive industry after WW2 comes
as no surprise to me.