Although Coventry Corporation had been running a tram service since the 1880s, the Corporation’s first bus services did not come into operation until 1914. The outbreak of the First World War that September, however, meant that the bus chassis built for Coventry by Maudslay were requisitioned by the War Office for Army use. When the war came to an end, new buses were ordered from Maudslay, and later from Daimler, and the service resumed in 1919. Bus services expanded during the interwar years, while from the 1930s tram services contracted. The death knell for the city’s trams came with the infamous air raid of the night of 14/15 November 1940, which destroyed the infrastructure they required. Austerity buses and vehicles from other corporation departments were brought into the city to make good the losses from that night, and from more heavy air raids that hit the city in April 1941 and August 1942.

In this book, David Harvey examines the Coventry bus fleet from when it first began in 1914 to 1946, when the final delivery of Austerity buses arrived in the city.