Respect is plaxton's key word

摘要

As it prepares to re-enter the mainstream bus market later this year, it's worth remembering that as recently as 2001, Plaxton was on the edge of an abyss. Britain's last full-size luxury coach manufacturer seemed destined to disappear as TransBus International announced plans to close its Scarborough factory. It would transfer Pointer bus production to Falkirk and either import coaches from eastern Europe or bail out of the coach market altogether. TransBus, truth be told, was far more interested in and comfortable with buses than coaches, which it didn't understand and from which it apparently wasn't making a penny in profit. Diversifying into building buses 10 years earlier may have greatly increased production at Scarborough, but it masked the factory's inefficiencies in coach manufacturing.