Bus & Coach Album : 1 (Auto Review Album Number 165)

The Auto Review series includes many titles devoted to builders of buses; AEC, Bedford, Leyland and more. In this publication we look at firms whose principal work was to fit bus or coach bodies to chassis made by other firms, There have been many dozens, probably hundreds, of such UK companies, so we do not claim that this is a complete survey of all British coachbuilders. We have, however, tried to include the more important or more interesting firms. The main factor for inclusion here is that bodywork was produced on a commercial basis for sale to someone else. Not included here (in most cases) are bodies made by companies which were primarily chassis manufacturers (Leyland, Dennis, Guy etc). They are described in the relevant Auto Review books (see the list inside the back cover). If, however, a chassis manufacturer such as Crossley frequently built bodies on chassis from other manufacturers, they are mentioned here. Mostly excluded are those firms which just built one or two bodies, or which only modified or refurbished old bus bodywork. With all our self-imposed exclusions and caveats we can only apologise if your favourite coachbuilder has been left out, or only has a cursory coverage. This is such a large subject that we have divided it over two volumes; in these pages we cover coachbuilders based in England.