Product Description

The UK bus operating and manufacturing industries are multi-million-pound businesses affecting the lives of millions of people every day, so it is inevitable that mistakes will be made as a result of over-enthusiasm, misreading the market, bad management or just plain poor judgement. In recent years, there have been bus and coach operators with grandiose schemes that were set to change the world, such as the short-lived British Coachways consortium, the AMOS scheme that would have flooded London with minibuses, the BET's minibus ambitions of the late 1980s, and the unwieldy mega-companies created by National Bus Company by London Transport's grand Reshaping Plan. Political misjudgements also played a part, with the New Bus Grants scheme of the 1970s that provided operators with cheap buses but ultimately skewed the market and the supply of buses, as well as other government-inspired ideas such the creation of British Leyland which ended up weakening the stronger Leyland bus. There were also bus models that promised much but didn't deliver, prime examples being the Daimler Roadliner and Guy Wulfrunian, both of which destabilised their builders in the end. In this unique book the authors examine these and many other topical issues through a mix of short one-page articles and other longer pieces. Illustrated throughout with over 200 nostalgic photographs, it will be of interest to all bus enthusiasts who are interested in a heady mix of discussion and debate about all significant issues which have affected the road transport industry over the years.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #105071 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-02
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

Customer Reviews

A bus book you can actually read and be educated by! Excellent!
The preamble to this new book from Ian Allan Publishing, promises some lively discussion concerning some of the stranger decisions and their effects on the bus industry over the last 40 years or so.
It doesn't disappoint! The chosen topics inevitably are subjective, though the author succeeds well in explaining his choices.

You didn't have to have been there at the time, as things are explained well and succinctly. I was for many of the "Blunders", but still enjoyed having things explained again as to how and why things turned out as they did. I was left particularly well informed of some of the more recent developments in the industry, both manufacturing and operating.

This book will provoke some differences of opinion, but it's really refreshing to get hold of a bus book which for once is about a damned good read, and I found it almost impossible to put down without reading it to the end. Makes a great change to the often lacklustre formula of photos, captions, and little or poorly researched text.

The content as well as covering the aftermath of various significant Transport Acts, from a model builders perspective also covers numerous interesting vehicle types.

Blunders not simply such as the stereotyped Roadliners and Wulfrunians, but LT's Merlins and Fleetlines get a mention, as do CIE's Bombardier, Quests, Iveco's big buses, and the coach output of bus builders MCW, Park Royal and Roe etc. This is by no means the exhaustive list of interesting prototypes discussed.

Advertised at £19.99, and plus p&p where you can't get to a retailing shop, my copy obtained through Amazon.com at £13.99 inclusive of shipping, was excellent value for an excellent read.