2013 – A curate’s egg of a year!

Vehicles

It wasn’t a vintage year for new model introductions with most manufacturers engrossed in developing their new Euro6 engines ahead of next month’s deadline and finding how to slot the bigger engine package into their existing designs. All the leading manufacturers have now unveiled their Euro6 units and many of them are completely new. Will they deliver all the added benefits, other than pollution control, that the manufacturers are claiming? We will have to wait and see – Euro4 and Euro5 didn’t.

Amongst the few new introductions, some of the most notable were Setra’s new ComfortClass and TopClass 500 ranges, the former going on to win European Coach of the Year 2014. It is a shame we won’t be seeing right hand drive variants. The tri-axle Mercedes-Benz Tourismo was launched in the UK to appeal to Setra customers. Shearings continued to buy right hand drive Setras for as long as they could but I do wonder what the residuals are going to look like in a few years time.

MB also announced a shorter and lower Tourismo K which will replace the Tourino but unlike that model it won’t be available here. VDL’s new lower height Futura 2 the MMD2 probably won’t either and sadly we certainly won’t be getting the practically silent electric Citea MLE bus either, although Irizar’s new i3 bus is destined for the UK on a Scania chassis.

King Long introduced the better styled XMQ6129Y to replace the XMQ6127Y and also announced the competitively priced XMQ6120C and XMQ6130C local coach which is also available as a school coach.

Volvo introduced two new coach models to replace the previous four, both with new engines the B8R and the B11R. They also announced a restyling of the 9700 and thankfully have dropped the Prestige Plus tag. Volvo also produced a new double deck chassis for hybrids, the B5LH, with impressive weight savings and no doubt the diesel equivalent will be similarly impressive.

Pelican announced it would import Chinese built Yutong vehicles in 2014.

One of the few totally new models to be introduced, and with immediate UK availability, was Unvi’s midi Tourings – the forward engined Touring GT on the MB Atego chassis, and the rear engined GTR using a MAN/ZF automatic driveline.

For most new introductions we had to look to the small vehicle sector like Unvi’s Sprinter based Vega EXT, Noone/Minis-to-Midis’ Turas 500C Sprinter van conversions, EVM’s interesting directly wheelchair accessible Sprinter and Stanford Coachworks 16 seater accessible on the new twin rear wheeled 4.5 tonne Renault Master.

Much of the mini sector has spent the year maximising sales of the last examples of the now deceased MB Vario (R.I.P) and planning how to plug the gap left by its demise. It should be an interesting 2014 for new models in this sector.

Both our leading double decker builders, ADL and Wrightbus, announced new designs which are impressive in the weight saving department. Included in these is Wrightbus’s new integral decker – the StreetDeck, which will also see the introduction of Mercedes-Benz engines to this sector for the first time in many a year.

It was left to Plaxton to lift the hearts of the big coach operators with the start of deliveries of the Panther Cub and the impressive 15m Elite i and then the introduction of the all new Leopard all rounder on the Volvo B9 and later B8R chassis. I understand that around 50 leopards have been sold already.

Ford announced a new Transit range hotly in pursuit of their exit from Southampton but we won’t see those until next year and there still isn’t an automatic option.

By the way has anyone seen the Optare Bonito? It put in a brief appearance at Aviemore but hasn’t been seen since!

Another significant vehicle development in 2013 was the arrival of gas powered buses – Anglian, Reading and Arriva all put batches to the test.