There’s a buzz of energy around Darren Roe, MD of Stagecoach East, which contrasts sharply with many of the more laconic bus company managers I’ve met. In fact ‘buzz’ may be an understatement; he’s quite exhausting to listen to, and I mean that as a compliment. It was evident when I heard him talk at […]
It is a big year for Iveco Bus with triple celebrations marking 50 years of the Iveco brand, 100 years of the Annonay city bus factory in France and 130 years of its biggest bus plant, Vysoké Mýto, in the Czech Republic. To celebrate this and witness the opening of the new Prototype and Testing […]
Following his treatise on Duple and its long running Dominant product, Howard Berry turns his attention to the final years of Duple coach production including the Laser, looking much like an evolved Dominant and the squarer high specification Caribbean, both of which ran to .2 versions. The squarer styling continued to the 300 series and […]
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. […]
When we road tested Yutong’s TCe12 electric coach – the first battery coach in the UK – we were in praise of so much that it is, and critical of what it isn’t. TCe12 is a competent inter-urban luxury people carrier – a coach, for sure, but in a very similar niche to Irizar’s i4, […]
It is probably a couple of decades since I attended this show, then held in Verona rather than Rimini, and in the interim the once strong cohort of Italian home market manufacturers has dwindled away, though some converters remain. Some of the old names are still to be seen, Sitcar, Della Via and Tommasini among […]
There’s a buzz of energy around Darren Roe, MD of Stagecoach East, which contrasts sharply with many of the more laconic bus company managers I’ve met. In fact ‘buzz’ may be an understatement; he’s quite exhausting to listen to, and I mean that as a compliment. It was evident when I heard him talk at […]
Operators used to tell me that midicoaches were something of a niche. That their customers actually wanted a ‘proper coach’ and that a vehicle with 35 seats was a bit of an oddball. The coach industry has moved on, and there are now few operators who’d be without a coach which bridges the gap. There […]
Held every other year, the FIAA show in Madrid is a significant event on the European exhibition circuit and especially so for the Spanish and Portuguese markets, which have pretty much returned to pre-pandemic levels. The latest edition, the 15th, was staged as usual at the IFEMA complex, one Metro stop away from Madrid airport, […]
