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Around in late 1981 Auckland was ready for Automatic gearbox buses with fitted new gearbox with ZF preselected gearbox with Speeds of 80km per hour and new bus was Designed from NZMB but unfortunately NZMB was just on merged to Purchased by Hawke Bro in Auckland so ARA like new German Designed bus was trailed in New Zealand around late 1970's for Auckland,Wellington and Christchurch.
ARA ordered 88 theses MAN buses from powered by Diesel or CNG gases powered buses.
1st MAN SL200 was fleet number 1099 was fitted with LPG was around Auckland City and Suburbs with competitor of Mercedes Benz 0305's and 0303's. SB3 Bedford's. Leyland's, and Mack's and etc older fleet for ARA
1099 was an LPG fuelled MAN demonstrator used in 1981-82.
Then on this date 1st of October 1981 ARA was ready lanched its first SL200 CNG bus.
All 88 buses with B46D VoV bodies. Numbers 1601-1661, 1663-1670 were built by Hawke 1981-84. 1662, 1671-1688 were built by CWI in 1985. The MAN SL200 has an 11 litre 6 cylinder naturally aspirated diesel moter. Most of the ARA buses had 3-speed Renk automatic transmission. 1627 has a 4sp Voith and 1630 a 4sp ZF transmission. Although the legal owner was Auckland Regional Council the buses were operated by Auckland Regional Authority.
Change of ownership from Auckland Regional Council to Transport Auckland Corp Ltd on 12/6/91 is not recorded. TACL operated as Yellow Bus co until 1998 when ownership passed to Stagecoach New Zealand Ltd. Bus 1627 has been named "Tick Tock". It is the only bus in the whole of the Auckland Stagecoach Fleet with a name above the front door. It was named after the workshop supervisor at Roskill,
Graeme McKlintock. It has been told that 1627 had a front door problem and it took a long time for Graeme to fix it. Hence the name Tick Tock.