The Ikarus 260 is a

high-floor High-floor describes the interior flooring of commuter vehicles primarily used in public transport such as trains, light rail cars and other rail vehicles, along with buses and trolleybuses. Interior floor height is generally measured above the ...

, three-door bus for city and suburban transportation purposes. It was made from 1971 to as long as 2002 by the Hungarian bus manufacturer Ikarus, making it the longest manufactured, largest quantity model of the factory.

History

The model featured a high-floor body, with the engine mounted under the floor in order to spare space and achieve better weight distribution. Design began in 1966, with the main designer being László Finta, the designer of the predecessing Ikarus 556 and 180 models. The first three prototypes left the Mátyásföld plant in 1970, with serial production starting in 1972. With Hungary being the leading bus manufacturer in the

Comecon The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (, ; English abbreviation COMECON, CMEA, CEMA, or CAME) was an economic organization from 1949 to 1991 under the leadership of the Soviet Union that comprised the countries of the Eastern Bloc along wi ...

area, the demand for the new model quickly grew famous. Outside Hungary, the largest importers were the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and the GDR, but the model drew so much attention that it reached outside the

Iron Curtain The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its s ...

, with vehicles being exported as far as

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. In its native Hungary, the model was a long-term success. Every bus company used 260s to cover their routes from city to suburban, and even sometimes interurban traffic. During its peak in the 1980s, Ikarus 260, along with its articulated urban counterpart, the

Ikarus 280 Ikarus 280 was an articulated bus produced by Hungarian bus manufacturer Ikarus from 1973 to 2002. It was succeeded by the Ikarus 435 in 1985. Construction features The Ikarus 280 is a model of the Ikarus 200 series. It is made of two rigid ...

, and its interurban counterparts, the

Ikarus 250 The Ikarus 250 is a high-floor bus used as a coach for long-distance service. It was made from 1968–1989, alongside the smaller Ikarus 256, by the Hungarian bus manufacturer Ikarus. Technical description Designed as a high-floor two-axle ...

and

Ikarus 266 Icarus is a character in Greek mythology. Icarus or Ikarus may also refer to: People * Roger Squires (born 1932), crossword compiler who has used the pseudonym Icarus * Icarus (wrestler) (born 1982), wrestler with the Chikara organization Place ...

were almost exclusively the sole bus models that the general public could board for their respective rides. The factory, overgrowing with confidence in the model's success, turned little attention towards developing the successor of the increasingly obsolete 260s, the Ikarus 415. Instead, Ikarus invested in a huge re-manufacturing effort in the late 80s to replace the aged out fleet of their Hungarian and Soviet partners, with only minor optical differences applied compared to the original buses dating to the early seventies. While the plan worked short-term, the lack of modernization later came with grave consequences. In the 1990s, the factory experimented with a modernized facelift version of the 200 series, culminating in the Ikarus Classic series, where the 2 was replaced with a C in the model code (i. e. Ikarus 280 -> Ikarus C80). While popular with the suburban and interurban companies of Hungary, it failed to draw attention as it was too obsolete for the international market. The last ever Ikarus 260 left the Székesfehérvár plant in 2002, and became a part of the

Szeged Szeged ( , ; see also #Etymology, other alternative names) is List of cities and towns of Hungary#Largest cities in Hungary, the third largest city of Hungary, the largest city and regional centre of the Southern Great Plain and the county seat ...

local transport system.

References

Bibliography

*Gerlei Tamás, Kukla László, dr. Lovász György: Az Ikarus évszázados története. Budapest: Maróti Könyvkereskedés és Könyvkiadó Kft. 2008. ISBN 9789639005853

External links

* {{Ikarus Buses Ikarus buses Step-entrance buses Vehicles introduced in 1972