Wrightbus

[gilesbus1]

RE: Wrightbus
Devastating news. However the product range is part of what is to blame, and the fact major customers such as Lothian, have essentially turned there back on them and gone to ADL.

The Streetlite has been the real let down it wasn't what operators wanted and has reliability and style issues. Really if any hope is there of saving the company the best option for them would be probably to either sell out to Volvo Bus or VDL and start to built products in combination with them, the Streetlite can never be a success and chassis building there is a disaster.

They do have some orders as follows that are outstanding from Kowloon Motor Bus, Citybus/New World First Bus, Diamond Bus North West, Preston Bus and First Leeds and First Eastern Counties. Presume whats there isn't enough to continue, note that all those orders are for deckers, nothing for Streetlites. Another failure was the SRM built to New Routemaster design on Volvo B5LH chassis, very few of these have been sold and none beyond London despite it supposedly being sold as a rival to the ADL Enviro400 City. I doubt any more than 10 of them have been made. The loss of the New Routemaster following election of the Labour Mayor of London also hasn't helped. Another thing not helping is the collapse of FirstGroup which at one stage were ordering about 80% of production and the loss of orders at National Express to an ADL exclusive deal, the restructuring of Arriva, and the failure to explore potential markets in Europe, the USA and Australasia which are a;ll starting to look at double-deckers for mass transit, the loss of orders from Singapore to ADL and the slowness in developing electric models, all this has had an effect.