Coach for sale – one very careful owner, and driver…

27/08/2024 Ashleigh Sinclair Coaches, Features

The Magiq caught relaxing in the sun on a day out to Sidmouth in April 2018. BARRY WATCHORN

Alan Payling reports on a coach operator which, having bought a brand new Bova Magiq in 2006, has only just decided the time is right to say goodbye

In this disposable world, the days when you bought something new and kept it for a lifetime is largely a thing of the past. Built-in obsolescence and products that are either too difficult to repair, require parts that are difficult to find, not to mention the struggle of getting someone to repair a product at reasonable cost, are all incentives to just dump something and buy new. Fashion also dictates that you just have to have the latest product. Hence we see lines of people queueing overnight for the latest Apple device.

But this is not the case for coaches. Not quite. I have always understood that the estimated working, and profitable, life of a coach is some 20 years. Initially, when a new coach is driven away from the dealership after the photo-op for CBW magazine, it will serve on the new owner’s front line work. For a while, it might even be the firm’s flagship with everyone thrilled to inhale those fresh, chemical aromas that come with a brand new vehicle.

But depending on the sort of firm that first uses a coach, perhaps going through the hands of many drivers, it’s flashy eye-catching days will soon be a thing of the past as new models join the fleet. Where a new coach is lucky enough to be purchased by an owner-operator, it will be cherished, loved and polished to within an inch of its life. It (she?) will become the apple of their owner’s eye, perhaps even being christened. But even those lucky wheels will one day find themselves being traded in for a new, trouble free model.

Perhaps they will again be lucky enough to be purchased by another small company or an owner operator and their glory days on tours can carry on for a few more years. But as the coach ages, their days might not be spent at Lake Garda but more often at Lake Windermere. But slowly their shine fades, they’re not the new kid in the coach park any more and the dreaded fate that they have all feared for many years will arise – school work!