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There has been a good deal of change to the buses in Coventry since the last visit of the Independent Transport videos cameras to film them in the city back in 2016. National Express is the principal operator in Coventry and the most notable feature is that in 2025 almost the entire allocation of buses serving the city are battery-electric buses. Most are double-deckers with chassis manufactured by the Chinese company BYD and bodywork by Alexander Dennis to their Enviro400City design. The first of these buses entered service in the city in 2020 and introduced a revised livery of grey and black with a ‘Coventry sky blue’ stripe replacing the previous two-tone blue and the sky blue and white livery applications. The other operator serving Coventry is Stagecoach and we see a number of their buses in this programme.

This DVD programme, mostly filmed in the city in 2023 also includes a visit to nearby Leamington Spa where we see National Express Coventry buses operating alongside Stagecoach buses. Our cameras returned to Coventry in early 2025 to catch up on the scene. However, we begin our programme with some archive 8mm cine film shot in the city centre in the 1970s when most of the fleet were Daimler half-cabs and Daimler Fleetlines! We then present some video scenes from the 1990s, which show Daimler Fleetlines and MCW Metrobuses in action. We then continue to 2023 to see the new electric buses running alongside the diesel Enviro400 double-deckers and Wright Eclipse Urban-bodied Volvo B7RLE single-deckers as well as some older Alexander ALX400 double-deckers.

On our return in 2025, which was on a Sunday, most of the buses in service were electric with a handful of ADL Enviro200MMC single-deckers. Our filming locations in Coventry included Upper Well Street, Corporation Street, The Burges, Trinity Street, Hales Street, Fairfax Street and Pool Meadow Bus Station. Similar locations were visited in 2025 in addition to Ironmonger Row and Cross Cheaping. In Leamington Spa our filming took place at various places along the Parade. There are plenty of interesting things to see on this programme, so we hope that you enjoy your visits to Coventry and Leamington Spa.

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