Scalia plans to sell decker chassis to UN
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SCANIA is pressing ahead with its plans to sell doubledeck chassis in Britain from next year, and will unveil its first BR112DH in January.
Scania-Bussar marketing manager, Gunnar Edwall, announced in London last week that the first prototype will be brought to Britain in the new year, and that production will start in August 1980.
It is a semi-integral 9.5m chassis, rather than the customary set of front and rearrunning gear. It has a naturally aspirated Dll engine, full air suspension, and a choice of three-speed Voith D851 or twoor four-speed Scania automatic gearboxes.
Voith will be fitted to the first chassis, but Scania is keen to sell the message that its own units are a considerable improvement on the troublesome HR501 two-stage gearboxes fitted to Scaniapowered MCW Metropolitans.
Mr Edwall said the company is aiming for a 10 per cent share of the British doubledeck market — expected to be around 1750 buses per annum throughout the 1980s — and that he sees the 800 MCW/ Scania buses in British service as "a good platform for our extension". The company claims that the chassis will sell for between £23,000 and E25,000, with the Voith-geared examples being the most expensive. This is significantly cheaper than comparable British-made chassis.
Discussions have been held with British bodybuilders, but Mr Edwall kept their identity secret. When Scania first announced the plans for BR112DH earlier this year, Northern Counties and Alexander were named as possible bodybuilders.
One thing is certain. Scania will not build any doubledeck bodies of its own on the chassis. But it will develop a left-hand drive version fot other markets if demand rises in the next few years.
The company claims to have generated considerable interest among British operators, but again would not be specific. All that spokesmen would say last week was that it would consider a London Transport order "prestigious", but smaller orders would be equally useful.
Scania says also that it has cured many of the fuelconsumption problems encountered with the Metropolitan. Spokesmen would not be drawn on the size of any savings, but said they considered Leicester City Transport's current 5.8mpg figure as lower than could be achieved elsewhere with Metropolitans. BR112DH would do better than that.
Much of the problem, says the company, can be overcome if engine idling speeds can be regulated more accurately, and Scania is trying to educate its customers.
BR112DH will not have its predecessor's stepped lower saloon floor, but it is not being fitted with low profile tyres.
The new model will have an encapsulated engine with 77dBa noise level, but it will be simpler than the Metropolitan. It will only have one, offside, radiator, and piping around the engine will be less complicated.