Praise & prizes for bus design
Ten important international design awards in just one decade for MAN and NEOPLAN coaches and buses.
An elegant sight: when the MAN Lion’s City Hybrid approaches a bus stop, the already classic style of its tastefully curved bodywork enhances any cityscape. MAN’s design specialists took up the challenge of developing an attractive solution for the roof which houses the Ultracap system (where recovered braking energy is stored). The answer: a bold sweep of anodised aluminium stretching as a dynamic ‘AeroLine’ from the B-pillar to the roof. The overall styling of the hybrid bus fits seamlessly into the clear design philosophy of the MAN vehicle family.
The international jury of the “red dot award”: product design 2011 praised the MAN Lion’s City Hybrid as “a masterpiece” and declared it the winner of the red dot design award, a globally recognised seal of quality.
The hybrid bus added another jewel to its crown by winning a prize in Berlin at the “Challenge Bibendum” 2011, a major international sustainable mobility event. The jury, which included designers, technicians and journalists, justified its choice by citing the vehicle’s “intelligent design and successful realisation”.
These awards are the latest chapters in an astonishing success story. During the course of the past decade, buses from the MAN and NEOPLAN brands have won no fewer than ten international design prizes.
Is there a particular reason for these successes? “Sure”, says Stephan Schönherr, head of MAN’s Bus Design Division. “It comes down to flawless collaboration between the construction and design teams.”
Smooth collaboration between the teams
Many different requirements must be satisfied before a vehicle acquires its final appearance. These include spaciousness, modularity, overall design, drive system and of course, budgetary constraints. Improvements in aerodynamics directly benefit the customers. Best-in-class drag coefficients of 0.36 and 0.35 for the NEOPLAN Starliner and Cityliner coaches reduce diesel consumption by ten percent.
“The interaction is flawless”, says Schönherr. “The design division has
an in-depth understanding of the technological requirements, while the engineers appreciate the opportunity to make their advanced solutions look good on the outside too.”
The harmonious collaboration between the teams is evident in the many awards, but also in the market response. MAN and NEOPLAN brand vehicles prove from the very first glance that city buses and overland coaches are positive modes of transport—eco-friendly, high-quality and future-proof. MAN’s design division is particularly proud of the award conferred upon the NEOPLAN Cityliner in 2007, when the vehicle won the “red dot: best of the best”. MAN earned this very special seal of quality for the “perfected advancement of style elements that are typical of classic coaches” and for the vehicle’s “sporty and assured visuals”.
The run of awards began with the MAN Lion’s Star in 2002. At that time, the most important tasks were to find a new and appealing design idiom—and naturally also to align manufacturing processes to design. The large steel skeletons and the gigantic dimensions necessarily involve a high degree of complexity. “Everyone must work with the utmost precision”, says the head of Bus Design.
Productive sharing of know-how between the design and construction divisions successfully contributes to ongoing optimisation. Not only do vehicles from MAN and NEOPLAN regularly win the red dot design award, they’ve also won the iF product design award.
“A tremendous honors”, says Stephan Schönherr. “We design our vehicles in accord with modern trends, without making them look faddish or ephemeral. Our buses are timeless.”