DeluxoMoto

**DeluxoMoto, Ltd** is a British micro-car manufacturer. Deluxomoto was originally founded as a bus manufacturer that saw many years of success selling buses to fleets throughout Europe. For many years, they were regarded as Europe's premiere brand of coach builders. After facing many lawsuits in the early 1970s, DeluxoMoto shifted exclusively to production of consumer vehicles.

## History

#### **Early History**

In 1935, Elias Holmes, who had recently inherited a large fortune, founded DeluxoMoto after recognizing an increasing demand for public transportation. The brand quickly built a name for itself due to its high quality products and found immense success in the market.

Despite early successes, DeluxoMoto failed to properly update their products and, by 1949, had run into financial trouble brought forth by increasing competition in the market. On November 12, 1948 Elias Holmes passed away from natural causes. His son, Callum Holmes, inherited the company and began addressing issues within the company. For the first time in the company's history, equity was sold off to investors to generate capital.

#### **DeluxoBus 5**

Led by Callum Holmes, the firm began investigating ways to make their products more attractive to buyers. After little deliberation, the majority partners of DeluxoMoto greenlit a project to develop a penta decker bus, known as the DeluxoBus 5. The reasoning behind this decision was revealed during an interview for the 1995 documentary "Tower of Terror on Wheels", in which a then-partner of the firm stated that they "believed that if we could offer a higher seating capacity at a lower price, we could regain a larger hold of the market."

To achieve this at a lower cost than their competition, they opted to use an engine that was already being developed for the firm's DeluxoTruck project. The engine, which was not designed with the DeluxoBus 5's weight in mind, was able to be mass produced at extremely low cost. As a result, the DeluxoBus 5, was extremely underpowered.

Longtime customers were eager to introduce the new bus into their fleet and the company initially struggled to meet demand. However, buyers quickly noticed several faults in the DeluxoBus 5's design—including a severe tendency to roll over and a dangerously underpowered engine.

DeluxoMoto refused the refund requests from unsatisfied customers and instead offered to modify the vehicles structure to reduce rollover risk and replace the engine with an alternative sourced from one of their higher power models. The modified DeluxoBus 5s continued to rollover, and in several instances the modified buses experienced structural failures in the floor of the fifth deck. Several lawsuits ensued, leading to an investigation determining that the modifications, intended to reduced rollover, had been the cause of the failures.

DeluxoMoto's method to reduce rollover involved reducing weight on the upper decks. The majority of the weight removed had been removed from the fifth deck, and the removal had left the floor under-supported and liable to collapse during quick movements.

DelxuoMoto had not been aware of this issue prior to the incidents. During testing, the modified frame functioned as intended, however, this was due to the firms failure to test modified models for roller-over safety with the newly replaced, higher performance engines.

As a result, the firm was forced to refund all sales of the DeluxoBus 5 and had their license to produce high capacity passenger vehicles revoked. They also faced heavy fines from the government and were forced to pay for damages.

#### **DeluxoTruck**

After the DeluxoBus 5 incident, Callum Holmes repurchased all outstanding shares and funded the company with £50,000,000 of his personal fortune. Now forbidden from producing commercial vehicles, Holmes refocused the company's efforts toward's the DeluxoTruck project.