Formative for over 50 years, now awarded best coach

The NEOPLAN City­lin­er N 116 was intro­duced 50 years ago as the fore­run­ner of today’s high-deck coach seg­ment. To mark the anniver­sary, there is now a “Plat­inum” spe­cial mod­el that has a leg­endary role mod­el — and is now also award-win­ning. Because the new City­lin­er Plat­inum ver­sion received the pres­ti­gious “Coach of the Year 2022” award. The award was pre­sent­ed in Munich by jury pres­i­dent Tom Ter­je­sen to Andreas Tost­mann, CEO of MAN Truck & Bus, and Rudi Kuch­ta, Head of Busi­ness Unit Bus at MAN Truck & Bus. The 22 Euro­pean trade jour­nal­ists were par­tic­u­lar­ly impressed by the over­all con­cept of the coach, which scores points for eco­nom­i­cal dri­ving and dis­tinc­tive design as well as com­fort for dri­ver and pas­sen­gers and inno­v­a­tive safe­ty sys­tems. The “Coach of the Year” award has now been pre­sent­ed for three decades and is con­sid­ered the most impor­tant inter­na­tion­al prize in the coach market.

“We are grate­ful and very proud that our City­lin­er was able to con­vince the jury of experts — and in its anniver­sary year. The pres­ti­gious award is a great recog­ni­tion for the entire MAN team, which is tire­less­ly com­mit­ted and deliv­ers out­stand­ing work. After the titles ‘Coach of the Year 2020’ for the MAN Lion’s Coach and ‘Truck of the Year 2021’ for our new truck gen­er­a­tion, the new award for the NEOPLAN City­lin­er is the third prize in three con­sec­u­tive years for vehi­cles from our com­pa­ny. This speaks for our great and inno­v­a­tive prod­uct port­fo­lio and impres­sive­ly shows that we are ide­al­ly posi­tioned for the New­MAN strategy.”

- Andreas Tostmann

Overall package is right: NEOPLAN Cityliner convinces all along the line

At the begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber, the expert jury wel­comed four bus man­u­fac­tur­ers from all over Europe to the “Coach Euro Test” in Bled, Slove­nia. After an inten­sive week of test­ing — includ­ing numer­ous dri­ving expe­ri­ences and long tech­ni­cal dis­cus­sions — the jury’s ver­dict was clear­ly in favor of the City­lin­er as the new “Coach of the Year”. Above all, the coher­ent over­all pack­age of econ­o­my, com­fort, design and safe­ty impressed the inter­na­tion­al jury of experts. “The City­lin­er Plat­inum mod­el impressed us with its eco­nom­i­cal but at the same time pow­er­ful and dynam­ic dri­ving style,” said jury pres­i­dent Tom Terjesen.

Spe­cial men­tion was made of the pow­er­ful dri­v­e­line with mod­ern Euro 6 six-cylin­der engine, per­fect­ly matched with the new ZF Eco­l­ife Coach 2 6‑speed auto­mat­ic trans­mis­sion, which is designed for use in inter­ci­ty bus­es and coach­es and is par­tic­u­lar­ly suit­able for demand­ing routes with steep gra­di­ents and tight curves. Con­stant brak­ing and pow­er­ful accel­er­a­tion require fre­quent shift­ing with­in a very short time. It is pre­cise­ly in such sit­u­a­tions that the Eco­L­ife Coach scores points thanks to its high effi­cien­cy. Also con­vinc­ing: the smooth and effi­cient accel­er­a­tion with­out trac­tion inter­rup­tion when chang­ing gears.

The jour­nal­ists also praised the high-qual­i­ty dri­ver’s work­place and the inno­v­a­tive safe­ty and assis­tance sys­tems that ben­e­fit both dri­ver and pas­sen­gers. These include the active, elec­tron­i­cal­ly adjustable damp­ing sys­tem MAN Com­fort Dri­ve Sus­pen­sion (CDS), MAN OptiView and thus the world’s first mir­ror replace­ment sys­tem for coach­es, and the active warn­ing turn-off assis­tant with pedes­tri­an detec­tion — and thus an effec­tive mea­sure against acci­dents that have their cause in the blind spot.

“The award shows that the new City­lin­er is still the right choice for any coach oper­a­tor today, after hav­ing shaped the indus­try like no oth­er for over five decades,” says Rudi Kuch­ta, adding, “Our two ‘Coach of the Year’ award win­ners — the MAN Lion’s Coach in 2020 and now the City­lin­er — exem­pli­fy our exper­tise in tour­ing coach­es. With the two brands, we can offer our cus­tomers opti­mum solu­tions for their intend­ed use, which is enor­mous­ly impor­tant, espe­cial­ly now, in a mar­ket that is still dif­fi­cult due to the pan­dem­ic. At the same time, the com­fort­able, inno­v­a­tive and mul­ti­ple award-win­ning bus­es offer the best pre­req­ui­sites for get­ting pas­sen­gers excit­ed about bus trav­el again.”

New platinum special model: one of the safest and most comfortable coaches in 50 years.

With the City­lin­er, dri­vers and pas­sen­gers go on a jour­ney in a true ever­green of the coach seg­ment. In 1971 it was shown for the first time at the leg­endary bus week in Mona­co. The anniver­sary mod­els of the leg­endary “Plat­inum Edi­tion”, strict­ly lim­it­ed to 60 vehi­cles, which came onto the mar­ket in 1995, attract­ed par­tic­u­lar atten­tion. The occa­sion was the com­pa­ny’s 60th anniver­sary. In 2006, its lat­est gen­er­a­tion was relaunched on the basis of the design icon NEOPLAN Star­lin­er in the unmis­tak­able “Sharp Cut” design. It did not take long for the City­lin­er, in its three avail­able lengths, to become a pop­u­lar coach with a spe­cial touch through­out Europe. In 20 years of MAN affil­i­a­tion, near­ly 3,000 bus­es have been built at the pro­duc­tion sites in Stuttgart, Pil­st­ing, Plauen and today in Ankara, mak­ing a total of around 8,500 City­lin­ers in five decades.

To mark the 50th birth­day of this suc­cess­ful mod­el, the City­lin­er Plat­inum spe­cial mod­el is now mak­ing a name for itself, the mod­el for which is the “plat­inum ver­sion” from 1995. The dis­creet plat­inum-col­ored paint­work on the sides, front and rear with the orig­i­nal “Plat­inum” let­ter­ing and oth­er chrome-col­ored ele­ments is rem­i­nis­cent at first glance of its leg­endary pre­de­ces­sor. A spe­cial “wow effect” are the dynam­ic new hub­caps, whose unusu­al turn­ing dynam­ics make the City­lin­er rec­og­niz­able as a “sports car among coach­es” even when sta­tion­ary. “The design was def­i­nite­ly one point among many that made it clear to us that the NEOPLAN City­lin­er def­i­nite­ly deserved the ‘Coach of the Year’ award,” says jury pres­i­dent Tom Terjesen.

But the coach also knows how to impress on the inside. Among oth­er things, the spa­cious inte­ri­or, new seats from the Exclu­si­vo series with option­al head­rests, and USB or wire­less charg­ing func­tion for smart­phones promise com­fort­able and relaxed trav­el. In addi­tion to com­fort and appear­ance, safe­ty also plays a deci­sive role in the City­lin­er: numer­ous inno­v­a­tive assis­tance sys­tems ensure the great­est pos­si­ble safe­ty for pas­sen­gers, dri­vers and oth­er road users. The many Coro­na pro­tec­tion mea­sures also con­tribute to this, such as equip­ping the bus with a MAN Orig­i­nal antivi­ral cab­in fil­ter. This active­ly pro­tects against the trans­mis­sion of virus­es by sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduc­ing the con­cen­tra­tion of aerosols.

Practicality in the jury’s focus

Since 1989, an inter­na­tion­al jury of experts has been award­ing the “Bus of the Year” and “Coach of the Year” titles to var­i­ous bus types on an annu­al basis. The main focus of the Euro­pean trade jour­nal­ists is on the prac­ti­cal suit­abil­i­ty and con­cept of the vehi­cles pro­vid­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­ers for the com­par­a­tive test. With the cur­rent award for the City­lin­er, MAN Truck & Bus has already been able to pick up the tro­phy for its MAN and NEOPLAN bus brands a proud 11 times — includ­ing six times as the title for “Coach of the Year” (2022, 2020, 2006, 2004, 2000, 1994) and five times for “Bus of the Year” (2015, 2005, 1999, 1995, 1990).