The MAN SG 220 was a
VöV-Standard articulated bus
An articulated bus, also referred to as a banana bus, bendy bus, tandem bus, vestibule bus, wiggle wagon, stretch bus, or an accordion bus, (either a motor bus or trolleybus) is an articulated vehicle used in public transportation. It is usua ...
designed and manufactured by
Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg (M.A.N.) in Germany between 1978 and 1983, available with two, three, or four doors in two different lengths. The bus was also exported to different countries, built locally in France, Slovenia, Turkey, and the United States.
In the American market, in order to meet
Urban Mass Transportation Administration "Buy America" requirements for federally-subsidized vehicles, the initial set of vehicles were shipped as driveable shells and finished in the United States by
AM General in Texas until 1979. After the joint venture with AM General ended, M.A.N. opened its own assembly plant in
Cleveland, North Carolina
Cleveland is a town in the Cleveland Township of Rowan County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 871 at the 2010 census.
History
The town dates from 1831 but was not incorporated until 1833. The first post office in Cleveland, ...
to produce the SG 220 and its closely related derivative SG 310 (starting in 1981) until it abruptly withdrew from the United States transit bus market in 1988.
Design
The full model number describes the type, generation, length, and number of doors:
Hence a SG 220-18-3 is an articulated bus long with three doors. Potential door locations are (from the front proceeding to the back):
# Ahead of the front axle, behind the windshield
# Ahead of the middle axle
# Behind the articulation, ahead of the rear axle
# Behind the rear axle
In the United States, the number of doors was limited to two or three, corresponding to locations 1-x-3-x or 1-2-3-x. The SG 310 was offered with two doors, in locations 1-x-3-x.
Both the SG 220 and 310 were high-floor "puller" type articulated buses, with the middle axle driven. The SG 220 and 310 were equipped with a M.A.N. D2566 MLUM/US inline-6 turbodiesel engine, rated at .
History
United States
The
AC Transit
AC Transit (Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District) is an Oakland-based public transit agency serving the western portions of Alameda and Contra Costa counties in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. AC Transit also operates "Transbay" ro ...
District serving
Alameda and
Contra Costa counties in the
San Francisco Bay Area began using an over-the-road articulated coach in Transbay service in 1966;
subsequently, AC Transit was one of six transit districts to develop a "super bus" specification in the early 1970s for a higher-capacity bus. A pooled purchase was intended to reduce per-unit development costs. Two European-built articulated buses were tested by AC Transit and
Seattle Metro in the summer of 1974: one based on the
Volvo B58
The Volvo B58 was a mid-engined bus chassis manufactured by Volvo in Sweden from 1966 until early 1982. It was succeeded by the B10M.
Operators
In the United Kingdom, it was sold to many major operators including Wallace Arnold and Park's of H ...
chassis, and the .
Riders received the
M.A.N.
MAN SE (abbreviation of ''Maschinenfabrik Augsburg- Nürnberg'', ) was a manufacturing and engineering company based in Munich, Germany. Its primary output was commercial vehicles and diesel engines through its MAN Truck & Bus and MAN Latin Am ...
bus favorably, and the specification was released for bid in 1975; the pooled purchase consortium, which by then had grown to encompass ten transit districts, awarded the order to AM General in August 1976. Deliveries of the AM General/M.A.N. joint venture SG 220 articulated buses began in 1978.
Buses were shipped from Germany as "driveable shells" and finished by AM General according to customer specifications. AM General terminated the joint venture agreement, taking effect after the delivery of the Seattle Metro buses, and MAN opened a manufacturing plant in Cleveland, North Carolina in October 1981, with an anticipated capacity of 400 buses per year.
MAN withdrew from the US transit bus market in 1988 after an order of 40-ft buses for Chicago was blocked by an injunction.
[ The Cleveland plant was sold in 1989 to ]Daimler
Daimler is a German surname. It may refer to:
People
* Gottlieb Daimler (1834–1900), German inventor, industrialist and namesake of a series of automobile companies
* Adolf Daimler (1871–1913), engineer and son of Gottlieb Daimler
* Paul Da ...
subsidiary Freightliner Trucks.
Operators
United States
Several operators in the United States formed a pooled purchase consortium and awarded the bid to the AM General/M.A.N. joint venture (the sole bidder)[
Although operating experience with the eleven initial operators showed the per-passenger labor costs of driving the articulated bus were reduced compared with conventional buses, the articulated bus cost was almost double that of a conventional bus, required maintenance was more frequent and more costly, and dwell times were increased.]
Competition
* Crown-Ikarus 286
The Crown-Ikarus 286 is a type of transit bus that was manufactured for the U.S. market from 1980 until 1986, under a joint venture between the Ikarus Body and Coach Works (Ikarus), of Budapest, Hungary, and Crown Coach Corporation from Los Ange ...
— In 1982, the only other manufacturer that had delivered an articulated transit bus to a United States transit district was Crown-Ikarus.
References
External links
*
*
*
{{MAN Truck & Bus
Articulated buses
MAN buses