Agreed, that's the problem - it's all in the past.
Depends - the past is the reason Wrights went down. You can't keep setting fire to customers.
I'll use the example of an operator I worked for who was a loyal Wright customer until 2015. They had bought Gemini's when these first came out alongside East Lancs bodies which aged pretty badly by comparison. They were a very different vehicle and a quality product. Even at 10 years of age, they wore that well. These were followed by some Cadets, and by 5 Volvo B9TL Gemini 2s, again lovely vehicles.
The problems started in 2013, when we were one of the first orders for the Streetlite Max. There was much discussion about what ADL was offering (either Enviro 200s, proven in the fleet and would have been fine, or the Enviro 300, which wasn't a vehicle we had many of) and what Wrights were offering. The order was made and a delivery date given of end of June/ early July 2013. We registered the service changes accordingly to take account of the new buses arrival, and for maximum impact they were to be concentrated on one route grouping.
July came and went and the promised vehicles didn't come. There was an issue with a certain type of London bus, which was also about to enter service. I can't mention it's name as that part of the thread has been moved, but it was viewed as an important deal for Wrights, so much so that all available factory staff were diverted onto it. Our 8 vehicle order was deemed less important. This wasn't a problem as we had lots of low floor Darts which could solider on, but these Darts were, being polite, a little 'ancient'... coming with the usual issues old buses have of wanting lots of attention.
Eventually as we went into July some buses did come from Wrights. The final ones in the batch came in August. Being a 'new' type of bus there were bound to be teething troubles and there were. The ticket machines wouldn't download as the master switch was turned off, thus losing power to the machine. So of course the ticket machines on the buses weren't downloading their information at the end of the day. This type of Wayfarer machine does have issues itself and missing data was an issue being made worse. This got the finance department quite excited as revenue and passenger numbers were 'down'...
There were other teething issues...So much so, people from Wrights came to meet the management. This was rewarded with an order for 10 more, increased to 11 after the award of another tender which would want a new bus. So, 19 Streetlites in a fleet with barely 8 weeks operational experience of this type of vehicle. Hmm....
Out of this batch of 11, the first arrived and had various issues that should have been sorted with the pre-delivery inspection. This bus was the first of the 19 to require a new engine, three months in after the first one failed. The problem with the Streetlite being that the Cummins engine is the standard 4 cylinder as opposed to the uprated 6 - this particular bus had a lot of high speed dual carriageway running. So, the engine was always working hard, and thus it failed first. Others in the batch then started to have engine failures. Not a problem of course, as Wrights supplied them with a 4 year bumper to bumper warranty. Regardless of how much less fuel is being consumed the cost of replacement engines outweigh the savings.
Then the company turned it's attention to double deckers, which were a long overlooked part of the fleet and not one which had benefited from regular investment over the years. 5 stock build Gemini 2s arrived and went into service with no issues, but in 2015 8 B5TLs with Gemini 3 bodies arrived. I left the business at that point but I got to hear about the warranty claims which Wrights refused to honour.
The company then wanted some more double deckers, and ADL was very keen to get the order, us not being a volume customer over the years and so 6 Enviro 400 MMCs arrived a couple of years later. The order was announced at the Coach and Bus show, and Wrights were very upset. 'You could have told us you were talking to ADL. We could have matched their price.'
The response from the now hacked off Wrights customer I'll leave to your imagination. It might involve some 'naughty' words
By no means were we a big customer of Wrights, but for 10 years a lot of the new vehicles which came to us were their vehicles. If the experiences of the company I worked for are the same as other operators it does explain a lot about why Wrights went out of business. Put simply, you have to make vehicles which customers can use, want to buy and can keep on the road. If there's a problem they need support, normally yesterday, and they need the vehicle turned round so it can go out and earn money and keep the people who pay everyone's wages happy.