It is surprising that until relatively few decades ago, all the mobility of people on the roads of the Mexican republic will be done through passenger trucks made in Mexico, to be more precise in the once famous Sultana buses.
It was a company brand Monterey trailerswhich saw in the growing interest of Mexicans to visit different parts of the country, the perfect opportunity to sell buses to the different transport lines.
Sultana buses, the kings of the roads
To give us an idea of their almost omnipresence, it is known that Transportes del Norte, the Chihuahuans, three gold stars, Pacific Transportation, Transportation North of Sonora, Autotransportes La Alteñathe Buses from the West, Mantem Autotransport, Red Star Y Gold starto name a few companies.
By the way, the latter innovated in its time, thanks to the power of sultana busesby offering a trip of only five and a half hours of Mexico to Acapulco. But the most surprising thing was that with the Sultanas he opened the route Mexico – TijuanaWith a journey time of 36 hours, employing four drivers on this trip, quite a feat.
Loved for rugged and luxurious
And shipping companies opened this and other routes from the mid-1950s to the late ’70s, first with the Sultan Super Imperial TM-37-7Dthen came the Model 7, then they made the Super Imperial 8while for 1959 they released an innovation, it was the first panoramic bus made in Mexico, people called it “hunchback”.
For soon, Sultana buses, equipped with springs resistant to potholes on highways and dirt roads, helped passenger transport companies to open new routes or reduce travel time on existing ones.
Sultana buses “invaded” Latin America
Its virtues were also appreciated by transport companies from Latin American countries, which is why they decided to import Mexican buses to their respective nations, as was the case in Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Guatemala and Honduras.
Models such as the SP (Super Panoramic) arrived to those nations, a unit equipped with 40 luxury seats, cafeteria, reading room, air conditioning and restrooms. Also the Sultana 10 Std, which was used to serve as urban passenger transport in Paraguay. It is for these and other models that the Sultana are remembered to this day by the older Latin American population.
The end of Sultana buses
But it all ended for Trailers de Monterrey, the company that produced the Sultanas, when it had to compete unequally with Dina, a bus-manufacturing company created by the Mexican state to assemble passenger buses.
This is because Dina not only had profits from the sale of her vehicles, she also had a public budget to operate. Sultanas stopped being made and sold in 1981.
