Crawley Luxury Coaches, of Three Bridges, Crawley, has celebrated its 65th anniversary with the delivery of two Mercedes-Benz Tourismos.
The West Sussex operator turned 65 in 2020, and the vehicles were delivered just before Christmas.
The new coaches seat 53 and are equipped with centre toilets and generous luggage space. They will be used on cruise ship and student transfers, as well as general private hire work.
Director David Brown has always favoured the Tourismo product for its generous luggage space: “We do a lot of cruise ship transfers and we have a student contract into Sussex University, so we need the luggage space, and lots of it,” he says. “The other good thing about the Tourismo is the way the lockers are designed – the drivers don’t have to do a lot of heavy moving and lifting to put the luggage into the lockers. We find them ideal for our operation.”
Mr Brown says the pandemic did not put him off buying new vehicles. “It’s progress – you’ve got to keep going.
“The value of the second-hand market in vehicles, with Euro VI and PSVAR, has gone down and down. The Tourismos were the right vehicles at the right specification, and it felt like the right time to buy.”
The new vehicles join 15 other Tourismos and three Setras in Crawley Luxury Coaches’ fleet of 52 vehicles, bringing its Mercedes-Benz range to 20.
