MAN building chassis for ‘world’s toughest off-road bus’
MAN Truck & Bus is continuing its cooperation with Czech-based manufacturer Torsus, to build the Torsus Praetorian’s skeleton chassis, which is claimed to be the “world’s toughest off-road bus”.
Designed to transport up to 35 people and their equipment safely across the world’s harshest environments, the Praetorian is a 10-tonne 4×4 off-road bus based on an upgraded, heavy-duty MAN TGM chassis, which is built at the MAN plant in Kraków and transferred to the Starachowice plant in Poland for further manufacture.
It is powered by a 6.9L six-cylinder MAN diesel engine with 286bhp and 1,150Nm of torque, as well as a heavy-duty 4×4 off-road transmission – sufficient for the bus to easily climb a 65 per cent incline.
The Praetorian’s welded chassis consists of 780 components, including 273-metres of 1,182kg steel profiles and 351kg of sheet metal parts, and receives a three-stage coating process for maximum corrosion protection, before heading to Torsus’ purpose-built factory in Horné Srnie, Slovakia, for final assembly.
MAN Truck & Bus has been working with Torsus since 2017. The 2,700-strong workforce at its 300,000 square-metre Starachowice plant help produce over 1,600 buses and 520 bus chassis a year, exported to customers in countries all over the world including Germany, France, Georgia, Norway, Sweden and Saudi Arabia.
