Following our August 2021 test drive of the Scania Fencer f1, the ‘new generation’ model has now arrived in the UK with a new chassis and engine. Richard Sharman put it through its paces around Nottinghamshire
May 2021 seems like a long time ago, but that was the month that Scania put on one of the biggest launches of a new bus product in digital media history. The glitz and the glam of the launch was because the UK was the chosen country to launch the new Fencer bus range to the world, and there is an appetite for it. This is the first fully built up bus offering from Scania in a decade, following on from the successful OmniCity range that was sold between 1997 and 2012.
James Thorley, Bus & Coach Fleet Account Manager at Scania UK, explained the background of the Fencer f1 project: “It all began in the summer of 2018 when we were invited to work with Higer, over and above what we currently do with the Touring, to create a new single-decker bus for the UK market. The Higer team came over to the UK and we had a benchmarking session about developing a bus for the needs of UK operators. The Higer team had some great ideas, and also showed us the single-decker they had developed for Morocco and Hong Kong. They explained that this model could be adapted for the UK market, but as a team, we felt that it was a model which was very specific to those markets. We explained to the Higer team what UK operators were looking for, and a few weeks later they came back to use with designs for the bus we see before us today,” said James.
“We were very happy with the design and look of the Fencer f1, so it was a case of deciding how to get the vehicle to market. We decided to build the first vehicle on an existing Euro VI Step D chassis and get it to the UK so that we could go through it and see if any changes needed to be made before full production began. When the vehicle arrived in the UK we were impressed with the build quality for the very first Fencer f1 built. It gave us an eagerness to press on with the project so we could show it to our customers. It has allowed us to show a completed vehicle to a range of operators, who have then given us their feedback on the vehicle and any additional features they would like to see and develop the vehicle further from there,” enthused James.
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