Plaxton 101

Plaxton is realistically all that’s left of the UK coach body manufacturing. The new Tear Drop as featured here on last week will set it apart from most of its foreign rivals, bringing Plaxton back into a place it once held on the UK’s roads.

Few can forget the 1958 Olgle-inspired Panorama, with its then innovative thicker pillar aft of the first window, often with brightwork.

Ten years later, this evolved into the even more pleasing Panorama Elite, with curved passenger windows and an air of under-stated quality, often enhanced by traditional, conservative liveries to complement the Panorama Elite’s clean lines. In term, this morphed into the successful Panorama Elite III. National Bus favoured the design with so-called Bristol domes for destination equipment, adding to rather than detracting from the overall design.

The family resemblance continued with the Supreme, with higher-curved passenger glass. Both the Supreme and its high frame Viewmatser cousin were perhaps less pleasing than the Panorama Elite.

And then came the Paramount, from 1982. At a time of burgeoning continental sales, Plaxton had to go radical. The Paramount’s waistline sloped up from the front to an attractive feature window, before returning to the horizontal towards the stern. The design immediately killed Duple competition and it opened the body surface to a plethora of modern livery designs, at a time when operators were experimenting with new liveries. The Paramount was the right product at the right time.


The discontinuation of the Paramount in 1992 probably marked the end of Plaxton’s highest point. It’s very unfair to say that its successors such as the Premiere, Prima and Panther then became a little too samey but they certainly didn’t (or don’t) stand so far from the crowd in the same way as some of their continental rivals.

May be that will change with the Tear Drop.

Green Line Reliance photo c/o the AEC Truck & Bus Fotopic Site used with permission