It’s not many coach operators who’d notice the steering wheel-mounted sound system controls available on a Scania truck aren’t offered on a Scania K 470.
But Richard Dawes isn’t your average run-of-the-mill coach operator.
The amiable managing director of Australia Wide Coaches reckons steering wheel-mounted volume controls would have been the icing on the cake for a vehicle that few would argue is the best-appointed coach in the country.
The strikingly liveried 13.5-metre coach has a Euro 4 12-litre 470hp engine, a 12-speed transmission with upgraded Opticruise and a steerable tag axle. And that’s just for starters.
Add GPS, road cam, flat screen TV monitors that provides every passenger a view of the road ahead, vending machines, airline-style safety cards in the seat backs, fridges, drink coolers and heaters, a second door, tapered floors and MP3 players, and you get a sense of Richard’s standards when it comes to specifying a coach.
And it’s that attention to detail and a philosophy that only the best will do that have driven his business to its position as one of the elite tour companies in the country. Australia Wide Coaches operates an all-Scania fleet engaged in day and city tours around Sydney, and Richard has some pretty firm views on why he chooses Scania and why he has specified his fleet the way he has. So it was unsurprising he would leap at the opportunity to acquire the first-ever K 470 in Australia, in the process logging a number of firsts for a Scania coach in Australia: first powered by a 470hp engine, first with a HPI engine, first with a Euro 4 engine, first with a turbo-compound engine, first with a steer tag axle, first with a GRS895 12-speed transmission and first with upgraded Opticruise.
Richard acknowledges 470hp is a huge amount of power and 2200 Nm a huge amount of torque to be propelling a three-axle vehicle that will never gross more than 20 tonnes. It’s a power-to-weight ratio that wouldn’t be out of place on a car.
“I had the opportunity to drive the 470 in Sweden, and it was interesting to see how it was going to perform under load. It hasn’t disappointed. It maintains 100kmh wherever it goes, laden or unladen, pretty effortlessly,” he says.
“At the moment we are returning fuel figures of 32.5 litres per 100km, so obviously you pay a price for Euro 4 and for the extra power.”
Conversely, the Euro 3 12-litre 420hp engines in his fleet return 28 to 29 litres per 100km.
He concedes the K 470’s fuel use is a little higher than he would have liked, but is prepared to give leeway.
“In fairness to the product, it’s the first week of operation, so we need to get some clearer figures.”
But he is expecting major savings from the other crowd-pulling feature of the new coach, a steerable tag.
“I expect major tyre wear improvements - you’re hopefully going to get a much better life out of your tyres and better manoeuvrability around town.
“The vehicle’s 13.5 metres long, and manoeuvrability was good before with the fixed tag axle, but with the steerable tag axle it is even better in a tight location.
“It spins on a dime – it’s fantastic,” he says.
“Once we’ve operated the vehicle for a year and seen the operating life of the steer tag tyres against the additional cost of the vehicle. But that’s only one factor. It’s also made life easier for the drivers and you can’t put a dollar figure on that.
“If the driver can make a turn in one sweep rather than a three-point turn, what value do you put on it?”
The existing Scanias in the fleet are fitted with tag axle dump valves, which enable the axle to be lifted during a tight turn.
“But even then we’re flat out getting more than 50,000 to 60,000 km out of a set of tag tyres,” Richard says.
He is hopeful that the wider use of tag axles will see a relaxation of the regulations that prohibit longer coaches from some roads.
“A steerable tag is good for the pavement, and so we hope that we become a little bit more accessible for coaches for that 13.5-metre to 14.5-metre vehicle where we’re only allowed to access B-double routes.
“We hope that will open things up and we will be able to access every area.”
One of the features of the new K-series that he hopes to put to good use is the axle mass indicator, which shows the loaded weight of the coach, axle by axle.
“One of the things that we have noticed is that because we option the vehicle so well for the passengers, obviously that comes with a cost with weight, and as we discovered last year, when you relocate the fuel tank closer to the steer axle to improve your weight distribution, that can put you overweight on the steer.
“With this vehicle we can check the axle weights before we leave. And although it’s only indicative, it gives the driver a pretty good guide.
“It’s good at preventing you getting to that fine or penalty situation.”
The coach tares at just over 15 tonnes, leaving a payload of just under five tonnes for passengers, belongings and fuel.
To help on this front, the Coach Design body has a composite fibre material in the floor, rather than a traditional plywood floor, as well as a large amount of aluminium.
Of the coach’s transmission, Richard is unstinting in his praise. Not only does the K 470 have the latest-generation automated gear-shifting known as Opticruise, it also has 12 gears, courtesy the Scania GRS895 transmission.
“There’s a huge difference,” he says of the new compared with the old.
“It’s a completely new platform and it’s really taking on some of the opposition boxes.”
He finds the previous-generation Opticruise fitted in his fleet slow and unable to find the correct gear quickly enough.
“The eight-speed will skip gears, but nowhere near as often as the 12-speed,” he says.
Also gone is the small gearlever that distinguished Opticruise mark 1, and in its place is the steering column-mounted stalk. This has negated the need to re-organise the location of the controls that Richard undertook on his coaches fitted with Opticruise mark 1.
“Where it was positioned was precariously close to the side of the stairs. And so to avoid people missing the step and treading on the platform where the gearstick was located, we moved it to the other side.”
Until now, he has ordered automatic transmissions and Opticruise for specific roles, but concedes the introduction of the newer, upgraded Opticruise might see that change. In fact, disappointment with the original iteration of Opticruise was one of the reasons for specifying an automatic transmission in a K114IB he ordered two years ago.
“Opticruise was more ideally suited for longer-distance work I believe, and not as well suited to stop-start work on some of the day tours,” Richard says.
“The automatic was ordered for the shorter trips and around-town work.”
But the new, upgraded Opticruise in the K 470 might just force a re-think for those applications Richard had previously considered unsuited to the automated transmission.
The new dashboard has won instant plaudits – aside from the omission of volume controls in the steering wheel.
“It’s easy to use the switches and it’s permanently illuminated so that if you duck into a tunnel you don’t have to turn your lights on. The dash is automatically lit up.”
He sees advantages to the new multi-adjustable steering wheel.
“We never had any problems with the previous one, but it makes driver changes really easy.”
If only he could have got those steering-wheel mounted volume controls.
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