lennis plans for dere
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NNIS Specialist Vehicles :o strengthen its sales rts this year to tap post:gulation bus demand as it .ves.
'he company, formed last r when the Hestair Group :ructured its commercial icle businesses into DSV ilding buses and fire en': chassis at Guildford), stair Duple (building ches and truck cabs at ckpool) and Dennis Eagle ilding refuse vehicles and :ks at Warwick), plans to 7 buses designed to meet expected demand for new Licles once the present =minty disappears.
kccording to managing :ctor Steve Burton, who • ke exclusively to CM last A, Dennis is prepared to :r vehicles from midibuses yards. "We believe the rket will be horses for courses, and are convinced that there is going to be a market for durable vehicles, although not necessarily the same size as today's buses."
Dennis, which has capacity to build 400 buses a year in its compact and reorganised factory, believes it is well placed to meet the demands of a contracting market, although it stresses that its willingness to adapt designs to meet customers' requirements does not mean it will say "yes" to every operator's peculiar demands.
It is building a batch of 1 1m three-axle Dragon double-deckers for Hong Kong at present and will soon have supplied over 600 buses there over eight years.
According to Burton, it is equally able to meet the demand for long production runs from British customers, including anything London Buses might require in 1987.
He is, nevertheless, realistic about Dennis's chances of securing its share of the British bus and coach market after manufacturing capacity is trimmed by a Leyland/MCW merger or some other takeover of Leyland.
"We're not going to dominate the bus market and we're not going to have an 80 per cent share of the market," he told CM, but he does believe it can improve on the 7.1 per cent share it has achieved in the first two months of this year.
Privatised National Bus Company subsidiaries, freed from NBC's central buying decisions which currently favour Leyland and MCW, are among the targets for Dennis's sales efforts.