NABI + Optima

[rmadisonwi]

For those that haven't heard:

http://www.nabiusa.com/new.cfm

http://www.optimabus.com/news_company.php?id=0

Meanwhile, the Optimas still haven't been delivered to CTA. Just a month late, so no big deal, right? Of course, with an increase in U of C service scheduled to start next week, one can only wonder where the buses will come from to serve it.

[geneking7320]

It occurred to me that the first Orion buses I recall seeing were 30 footers. Does anyone think the design of the Optima will have any influence on NABI's larger model buses?

Gene King

[Busjack]

As I previously mentioned, this is more like investment funds positioning themselves than any operational change. (For instance, I believe there was a controversy over whether any of the builders of small buses were able to meet the financial reporting requirements of Miami's request for bids for 300 of them; maybe this gives Optima more capital.) This gives NABI's owners (Cerberus--the same people who own Chicago area Cub Foods) a substitute for the English Optare, which NABI's Hungarian owners thought could be a successful 30 footer in the U.S. market, but sold back to the English when it was not.

If there were any product integration, I would argue that the Opus 35 footer makes more sense than the NABI 35LFW.

One has to realize that the design of both products is foreign--Wrightbus (Opus) and Hungarian (NABI). [i should have also said, more responsively to Gene King, that because of this, any integration of styles would depend on what the foreign body builders provide, rather than a commonality of ownership of the assemblers.]

The real question is whether Cerberus intends to integrate the management of both companies. kansas.com says operations at Optima will not change, but we all know how long statements like that stay operative after a takeover, and a later story says that manufacturing stays, but raises doubt about the rest, and lays to rest any belief that Optima will develop a 40 foot bus. (The surmise in the article that Optima would build 40 foot high floors for New Jersey makes no sense, since Ikarus-NABI has that.) But maybe Optima management will take over NABI, rather than the reverse (which some internet groups predict as a bad development).

Doing the search for the preceding also came up with a story that Cerberus also bought Blue Bird. The release stresses NABI's 40 and 60 foot buses, Optima's 30 and 35 footers, and financially distressed Blue Bird's school and commercial buses, but both competed for the Miami contract.