Mercedes-Benz Bus and Coach Books - History

The Mercedes Benz Midibus

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This book covers an important aspect of British bus provision that has not been fully documented before. The Mercedes-Benz Midibus may have been small, but it had a huge impact. It became well respected by fleet engineers and served its purpose well.
This story is not just about a successful vehicle, it focuses on several small coachbuilding businesses that rose to the forefront of the British manufacturing industry, through the work of their designers, craftsmen and salesmen. The variety that the Mercedes-Benz Midibus offered was quite remarkable!

The London Bendy Bus

Between 2002 and 2006 six of London's bus companies put into service 390 articulated 'bendy' buses on twelve routes for transport in London.

During what turned out to be a foreshortened nine years in service, the Mercedes-Benz Citaro G buses familiar on the continent and worldwide earned an unenviable reputation in London; according to who you read and who you believed, they caught fire at the drop of a hat, they maimed cyclists, they drained revenue from the system due to their susceptibility to fare evasion, they transported already long-suffering passengers in standing crush loads like cattle and they contributed to the extinction of the Routemaster from frontline service. In short, it was often referred to as 'the bus we hated'.

This account is an attempt by a long-time detractor of the bendy buses to set the vehicles in their proper context - not quite to rehabilitate them, but to be as fair as is possible towards a mode of transport which felt about as un-British as could be.

Abschied vom Standard-1-Bus : Die letzten Standard-Linienbusse der ersten Generation im Einsatz

Von Ende der sechziger Jahre bis in die neunziger Jahre prägten die Standard-Linienbusse der ersten Generation den Öffentlichen Personennahverkehr (ÖPNV) in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Bei den großen städtischen und kommunalen Verkehrsbetrieben sind sie heute längst ausgeschieden, doch einige private Omnibusunternehmen setzen-meist im Schülerverkehr-auch heute noch auf die robusten Standard-1-Omnibusse der Hersteller MAN, Mercedes Benz und Magirus.

Durch den Trend zu modernen Niederflurbussen, klimatisierten Fahrzeugen sowie immer strengere Umweltauflagen ist die Anzahl der noch in Deutschland eingesetzten Standard-1-Busse in den letzten Jahren allerdings rapide gesunken. Das absehbare Ende dieser Omnibusgeneration im Linienverkehr ist daher Anlass, den ersten Band der Buchreihe "Stadtverkehr-Bildarchiv" den Standard-1-Bussen zu widmen.

Steigen Sie ein und begleiten Sie uns auf unserer Deutschland-Reise zu den letzten Exemplaren der Typen MB O 305/O 305 G und O 307, MAN SL 200 und SÜ 240 sowie etlichen weiteren Standard-1-Bauarten, die inzwischen echte Raritäten geworden sind.