Prague said goodbye to the bodies, almost all city buses will be low-floor – ČT24 – Czech Television
However, the transport company will keep several bodies. They will use them on lines 180 and 213, where they will run as retro connections – similar to the original unreconstructed T3 type trams, they run on selected connections of tram lines 2 and 15. Nevertheless, more than a dozen bodies set off to say goodbye to normal traffic on Friday; from Saturday, only two short and one articulated bus will run on the two lines.
Karosa still produces, but under a different name
The Karosa company was established in 1948 by the nationalization and renaming of the Vysoké Mýto company Sodomka, which originally produced bodies mainly for passenger cars. It focused on the production of buses, under which Karosa did not manufacture them until the Š series, designed in the early 1960s. The most successful series were the Karosa 700 buses. After the revolution, the manufacturer became their evolution, the now decommissioned B951 was its last stage. At the same time, in cooperation with Renault, which controlled Karosa in the 1990s, it supplied low-floor buses to Czech cities based on the French Agora model.
Before the end of the century, Renault and Iceco, Italy, set up a joint venture to manufacture Irisbus buses, of which Karosa has also become a part. Part of the production then left Vysoké Mýto under the Irisbus brands, some also bore the Karosa designation. In 2006, Renault withdrew from the joint venture and left it entirely to its Italian partner. As a result, the former Karosa has been called Iveco Czech Republic since 2007. After disabling vehicle tracking, the Prague Transport Company has only a handful of Vysoké Mýto buses that run, for example, on line 100 to the airport or on line H1 for disabled passengers. Most of Prague’s city buses are from the manufacturer SOR.