NATIONAL 35 Years Old Today


That's the National brand.

As it turned out, the National Bus Company was but a mere blip on the bus industry’s timeline. If the Tardis would take us to 1969, no one would then have predicted that NBC’s time would come in some 15 years, so certain and confident was the new organisation.

NBC breathed its first on 1 January 1969, upon the official transfer of assets from the Transport Holding Company. Yet, the engagement was proposed by a Labour government in a white paper entitled “Public Transport & Traffic” and Transport Bill in December 1967, consummated in the Transport Act 1968 (on 25 October if that date has any modern significance) and conceived with NBC’s official formation on 28 November 1968.

Back then, the government was convinced passenger transport was best off in public rather than private hands. How things have changed.



Without doubt, the most significant achievement in NBC’s short life was the NATIONAL brand name, especially for its express services. 35 years ago today, Britain saw its first glimpse of this new development. We had to wait till 1973, however, to see the term National Express coined. Hitherto, express coaching had been somewhat disjointed, with Associated Motorways and London Coastal Coaches being the most important coaching “pools”. As regards coaching, the National initiative was of considerable importance and has lasted well beyond NBC’s break-up and privatisation.

NBC didn’t actually die till 1989, though it entered palliative care upon a terminal prognosis in 1986, with the sale of the first operating subsidiary that September (Badgerline), preceded only by that of National Holidays to Pleasurama in July. The last operational unit sold was London Country Bus (North East) to Alan Stephenson & Parkdale Holdings, in April 1988, followed by the last sale of all, Victoria Coach Station, to what was then London Regional Transport, six months later.

In parallel with the privatisation of its subsidiaries, NBC itself was winding up from 1986 and finally dissolved in early 1989.



NBC

1969 - Officially taking over from THC
1972 - Corporate brands introduced
1986 - First privatisation after only some 15 years of the brand
1989 - NBC officially wound up
2003 - Revised National Express branding sees end of Double N logo