The 1930s was the age of speed, luxury and elegance, and two industries which really embodied the aesthetic of the time were commercial air travel and motor coach travel, both of which had enjoyed rapid growth since the latter half of the 1920s. The prospect of flight caused greater excitement, but the coach industry benefitted from its influence. The stylists of the 1930s, enamoured with the thought of soaring through the skies, incorporated streamlining into everything, from cars and trains to architecture and household radio sets.
The coach industry, being reliant on impressing the public far more than other commercial-vehicle operators, was not indifferent to it, and the Art Déco coaches of the 1930s and 40s, such as this 1949 Dennis Lancet III, are some of the most beautiful commercials ever produced. With its alluring colour scheme and its gracefully slanted pillars, it could only have come from an age when walnut-effect Bakelite was finding its way into every home, and the skies over Croydon Airport buzzed with shining Dragon Rapides. The interior’s walnut veneer is not original, but it works to very good effect.
Dennis produced its first purpose-made bus chassis, the E-type, in 1925, and the F-type of 1927 proved
