History
Originally called Robert Wright & Son Coachbuilders. In the early years they gained a reputation for re-bodying lorries. In 1978, the company released its first aluminium-structured bus bodywork.
Wright's breakthrough into the mainstream bus bodybuilding sector came in the early/mid 1990s. The Handybus was a midibus body offered on a variety of chassis but was most successful on the emerging Dennis Dart attracting reasonably sized orders from a variety of operators including London Buses, Go Ahead Northern, Ulsterbus and Citybus (Belfast). This was followed by a move into the full size single deck market with the Endeavour body. This attracted orders from Ulsterbus who took 25 on Leyland Tiger chassis and Yorkshire Traction who took 10 on Scania K93 chassis and enabled Wright to develop its highly successful Endurance body which competed with Alexander's Strider and Northern Counties Paladin for orders on Volvo B10B and Scania N113CRB chassis. The Scania option only attracted a one-off order for 15 from GRT Holdings plc for its Midland Bluebird subsidiary. The Volvo option however was extremely successful and attracted large scale orders from Merseyside-based MTL Trust Holdings Ltd who took 120, West Midlands Travel who took 67 - out of a planned order for 250, GM Buses North who took 56, and Blazefield Holdings who took 24 (10 for Sovereign Bus & Coach, 6 for Yorkshire Coastliner, 5 for Keighley & District and 3 for Harrogate & District). Smaller scale orders for the Volvo/Endurance option included 9 for Ireland's Bus Éireann, 6 for Liverpool-based CMT Buses and 4 for Yorkshire-based West Riding. Other Wright products introduced in this period included two Mercedes-Benz-based products. First was the O405 based Cityranger which attracted an order of 20 from GRT Holdings (14 for Grampian Regional Transport and 6 for Midland Bluebird - all are now based at First Greater Manchester) along with a solitary example for Stevensons of Uttoxeter. The other was the Urbanranger - pretty much a re-badged Endurance, on the OH1416 chassis and this was launched around the time bus operators in the UK began switching to low floor chassis. As a consequence the Urbanranger only attracted a handful of orders, the most notable being 4 for Ulster-based Chambers of Moneymore, 3 for Walsall-based Midland Choice and 2 for Hertfordshire-based UniversityBus. However Wright had become well established in the bus bodybuilding sector by then and was more than able to exploit the opportunities the low-floor revolution would offer it from mid-1990s onwards.
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