The small volume allows a flexible approach to the needs of customers, which are gradually shifting from intercity and suburban buses to city ones. The situation in the economy, pah-pah, is stable, and large centers have funds for updating bus depots.
Actually, the city bus is not a novelty for Volzhanin: the 12-meter model 5270 was mastered eight years ago. A more capacious (up to 160 passengers) triaxial 15-meter city Volzhanin-6270 on the Scania chassis has been manufactured for a year. But the requests of Russian customers also do not stand still - give them a full-fledged "low-floor" with reliable imported units and to be inexpensive …
A low-floor bus is a simple-looking thing. To get into the cabin, you do not have to climb the stairs - one step from the sidewalk and the passenger inside. The real "low-floor" allows you to enter without steps, not only through the front, but also through the middle door, and even the rear floor is raised by a maximum of one step. This requires a completely different “tamping" of the units. The drive axle with an offset gear, a special layout of the engine compartment - all this makes the car more complicated and more expensive. But it saves time for boarding and alighting passengers and as a result increases the profit of transport enterprises.
When designing the new Volzhanin model, we decided to abandon the finished Scania chassis (although a number of elements are still from Sweden). The bodywork, as before, is completely independent, axles and steering from the German ZF. In the engine compartment of Volzhanin-5270N there is a six-cylinder in-line Deutz BFM1013ECP paired with the Voith hydro-mechanical “automatic machine”. It is not necessary to introduce Deutz diesel engines in Russia - the impeccable reputation of these engines was laid down during the construction of the BAM.
I had to make a fair deal with the fuel tanks, which are located in the catwalks under the seats, and with the new ventilation scheme of the cabin, and even construct a "suspended ceiling". The peculiarity of the body is a modular design, in which the sidewalls are not solid, but assembled from sections that coincide in size with the dimensions of the windows. Such a scheme helps to get rid of many resonant noises that inevitably arise in the "stretched" lining of the bus body. It also allows you to quickly create and modification of different lengths.