Book review – Duple: The Dominant Era
Following on from his Plaxton trilogy, Howard Berry has turned his attention to the UK’s other leading builder of coach bodies in the mid 20th Century, Duple and its long running Dominant product. Launched in 1972 in response to Plaxton’s Panorama Elite, it would be refreshed twice during production producing the Dominant II and IV. Alongside the latter, Duple offered the trapezoidal windowed Dominant III and from the Dominant II onwards a Goldliner version with the floor level raised around 300mm. Early Dominants were lavishly embellished with chrome trim and Howard’s images show how this feature became more restrained during the model’s production run, particularly on some of the Goldliner variants.
The Dominant brought curved glass side windows to Duple products but a flat glass option was available, usually when double-glazed, also top sliding windows could be specified. The ultimate Dominants were probably the Dennis Falcon V based Goldliner IVs for National Express Rapide services and these are well documented, Howard managing to track down later life images of a couple of examples that did not self-combust at an early age. Once again, the 180 images covering the lifespan of the type have been well prepared and captioned.
Duple: The Dominant Era by Howard Berry is published by Amberley Publishing at £15.99. ISBN:9781445686820
- Get your copy here.