The white National Express coach brand is 50 years old this year, an anniversary marked by a red and blue logo placed discreetly by the entrance of its current fleet. When the state-owned National Bus Company introduced it in March 1972, the name was just National, in alternate colours of red and blue and accompanied by NBC's newly designed double-N logo also in red and blue. It was for coach holiday tours as well as long-distance express coaches, and replaced the distinctive colours of individual NBC subsidiaries. The aim was to offer a British - actually English and Welsh - equivalent of America's Greyhound, with the convergence of large numbers of National-branded coaches at key coach stations like London Victoria and Cheltenham advertising the existence of a comprehensive network. White was a practical alternative to Greyhound's silver. This was followed a few months afterwards by standard liveries mainly of poppy red or leaf green for most of NBC's service buses.
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