Plaxton Elite I
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The Plaxton Elite is a coach body unveiled at the Euro Bus Expo at the
National Exhibition Centre The National Exhibition Centre (NEC) is an exhibition centre located in Marston Green, Solihull, West Midlands, England. It is near junction 6 of the M42 motorway, and is adjacent to Birmingham Airport and Birmingham International railway sta ...
,
Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...
in November 2008 by the British bus and coach manufacturer
Plaxton Plaxton is an English builder of bus and coach vehicle bodies based in Scarborough. Founded in 1907 by Frederick William Plaxton, it became a subsidiary of Alexander Dennis in May 2007. In 2019, the maker was acquired by Canadian bus manu ...
. It is primarily targeted at the premium touring market. It went into production in late 2008. The vehicles can easily be identified due to their Boeing 747-like curved roof at the front end. Elites on scheduled express routes have a low-level destination board, resulting in a larger front windscreen than most comparable coaches.


Scheduled Express Services

The type began service with
National Express National Express Group is a British multinational public transport company headquartered in Birmingham, England. It operates bus, coach, train and tram services in the United Kingdom, Ireland (National Express operates Eurolines in conjunction ...
in early 2010 with seven operating between
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
and
Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...
. A further 16 vehicles are being procured to operate in Yorkshire, Oxford and Peterborough. In Yorkshire, Elites have replaced Caetano Levantes on the long distance 560 service to London, with the latter having been assigned to the 007 and 022 routes between London and
Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
. Onboard features on National Express vehicles include power plug sockets. Elites also have wheelchair lifts installed in their doorways, making them only the second type operated by National Express to be completely wheelchair friendly. National Express Elites have destination displays positioned below the windscreen, in order to avoid obscuring the passengers' forward vision. A batch of 15m B13RT entered service with National Express in 2014. 14m Elites entered service on the Oxford-Cambridge X5 in 2015 The 100th Elite was delivered to Howard Snaith Coaches in 2011 built on the
Volvo B9R The Volvo B9R is a rear-engined coach chassis built by Volvo. It can be built with bodies up to long and a maximum gross weight of . The B9R is equipped with a rear-mounted Volvo 9.0-litre 6-cylinder diesel engine under the floor, producing and ...
chassis.


Elite ''i''

In 2012, Plaxton introduced a new "interdeck" version of the Elite, named Elite ''i'', in which the passenger cabin extends above the driver's cab to span the full length of the vehicle; in addition there is a small lower saloon. The Elite ''i'' is 15 m long and 3.96 m high, and is built on Volvo B11RT chassis. The first batch of eleven went to Stagecoach West Scotland for
Megabus Megabus may refer to: *Megabus (Europe), a low-cost coach service with services in Europe owned by ComfortDelGro. *Megabus (North America) Megabus, branded as megabus.com, is an intercity bus service of Coach USA/ Coach Canada operating in the ...
services in December 2012.


See also

*
List of buses Year refers to the first year introduced. A range of years is the period the bus was manufactured. # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W ...


References


External links


Plaxton EliteNational Express news article
Elite {{bus-stub