THE SHOWBUS SOUTH OF ENGLAND BUS IMAGE GALLERY
Excelsior Coaches
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 Seen on the Plaxton stand at the NEC back in the eighties was this Plaxton Paramount 4000 doubledeck coach. It is believed to be XEL24 the coach built with Neoplan running units. It was used on the Bournemouth - London service. |
 With the Millennium Dome as the backdrop in August 2000, three Safeguard Coaches await the return of their passengers. Nearest the camera is a Volvo B10M with Plaxton Paramount coach work, E514EFX, which was new to Excelsior of Bournemouth - it may be that there was no need for a repaint upon acquisition. |
Seen at Woburn Abbey receiving a prize from Lord Tavistock is former AC Tours RRU822N. AC Tours was associated with Excelsior Euopean Motorways. The Ford coach was a popular choice for the group and similar coaches were used on overland tours to Russia and China. Ford even developed a special version of their R-series chassis designated the VM, in honour of Vernon Maitland, the then Chairman of Excelsior, it had an inclined engine and other improvements.
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 Ford R1014 RRU822N is seen some years later in the Plaxton display at the 2005 SHOWBUS lettered for Grahams British & Continental Travel. |
 Vernon Maitland's quest for a lightweight coach after Ford stopped producing their R series was to persuade the Quest company to produce something similar, the Quest VM. Twenty, including A813LEL, entered service in 1984 but were blighted by reliability problems. As it was Excelsior's policy to only keep front line coaches a couple of years they did not have to contend with them for too long. The coach also has another Vernon Maitland inspired feature, the deep windscreen from the Plaxton 3500 fitted to the lower 3200 body. This feature found favour with other operators. Vernon also disliked the small feature window towards the front of the 3200 body and got Plaxton to ditch that on his coaches. This Quest is seen at SHOWBUS 2009 in service with The Running Footman which used to operate locally. |
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