It was named when a lighter-weight chassis was introduced in 1952 as a modification to the older Leyland Royal Tiger (type PSU1), which was regarded by certain influential customers, especially in the BET group of privately managed bus companies, as overweight, over-specified and too expensive, those who were operating it were also finding vacuum-servo versions under-braked.

There was a choice of either a single-speed or two-speed rear axle, both of spiral-bevel form and derived from the Comet 90 design, the latter using an electrically actuated Eaton driving head in a Leyland casing.

The debodied chassis was updated to production specification and sent to Walter Alexander Coachbuilders, Stirling for bodying as a demonstrator until 1956 when it was sold to Stark's Motor Services, Dunbar.

Many later Tiger Cubs were rebodied, generally after accident damage, but occasionally when a coach operator wanted a more up to date appearance.

Among the first customers were Scout of Preston, an independent coach operator who competed with Ribble on Lancashire to London express services.

This company owned the patents for the preselective type of epicyclic gearbox which Leyland had fitted to the RTL and RTW Titans it sold to London Transport.

[1] The last Tiger Cub was bodied by Fowler of Leyland as a 44-seat bus and entered service with their parent company John Fishwick & Sons in January 1970.

Major export markets for the Tiger Cub were Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Denmark, Ghana, the Netherlands, India, Jamaica, New Zealand and Portugal.

[8][9][10][11] Leyland often sold export batches with Metro Cammell Weymann bodywork, but bodies were also produced by other UK firms and by local coachbuilders.

From 1961 when longer single decks were allowed domestic sales of the Tiger Cub began to tail off, and by 1969 the model could be considered replaced in the British Leyland catalogue by the similarly powered Bristol LH.

BET depreciated buses and coaches on the basis of a 12-year life, so most of its examples were sold quite early, Scottish Bus Group, like many municipals, wrote its vehicles down over 15 years, with the result that most had disappeared from service in the middle 1970s.

Overall, global sales were not as great as for the heavier Royal Tiger Worldmaster or later Leopard models but it kept Leyland in contention for home market single deckers during the 1950s.