{"product_id":"9781398108820","title":"Minibus Mania : The Rise and Fall of Minibuses 1970s-1990s by Malcolm Batten","description":"There have always been small buses used by bus companies for a variety of reasons, but in the 1970s a number of companies employed van-derived minibuses on experimental services such as Dial-a Ride schemes. These were small-scale operations.   From around 1984 the majority of British bus companies started buying minibuses in bulk. They began replacing full-size vehicles and soon whole town local networks were being converted to their use. At first these continued to be on small, van-derived chassis - Ford, Freight-Rover and Mercedes-Benz - seating around sixteen passengers, but soon larger, purpose-built vehicles began to appear from companies sometimes unfamiliar to the British bus market. There were also attempts to produce `midibuses' - larger than a minibus but smaller than a full-size bus.   By the mid-1990s the boom had come to an end. Larger vehicles started to replace many of these minibuses. Although modern accessible minibuses are still produced and still have a role to play, it is a far cry from their heyday.   This book looks back at the rise and fall of the minibus in British bus services.\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback \/ softback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56298310402421,"sku":"9781398108820","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781398108820.jpg?v=1762782800","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9781398108820","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}