MUCH-LOVED CLASSIC
As a bus enthusiast, we’re sure you all have a bus that you wish was parked in your garage. It’s hard not to be impressed by the ever-changing features and abilities of our modern bus and coaches today and we are constantly blown away.
However, if we had to choose a dream bus, it would always be the classic oldies that get the most attention. There’s something about the excessive details and dynamic shapes of the past that bus lovers can’t help but be drawn to.
Today’s drive of a 1958 Ansair Flxible Clipper is a bus that anyone would find it hard not to want the keys to in their pocket. It’s truly a real head-turner, a step back in time and a credit to its owner Darrell Booth, the operations and fleet manager at Fantastic Aussie Tours’.
We got to check out two amazing historic Clippers before we set off today: one was the very first imported to Australia by Pioneer Tours from the Flxible Company in Loudonville Ohio, USA in 1947; and the second was Booth’s outstanding 1958 Clipper. Parked side-by-side this pair is really something to see. What makes them even more amazing is that, together, they are the very first and the very last Clippers in the Pioneer Tours Clipper Fleet and both in an impeccable, fully restored condition. Their paintwork and detailing is mind-blowing.
Between these two Clippers there was almost a 10-year gap in build time, but they both certainly retained the same unmistakable Clipper features: the dual curved windscreens, the roundness of the body with an art deco feel and the stainless steel and chrome work. Although, externally, they appear very similar, Booth says that, mechanically, they had certainly progressed from a more ‘agricultural’ drive to
