Official Luxurious Bus of FIFA West German Crew

The opening match of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar is lower than every week away. Whereas the anticipatory occasion is presently going through its personal problems with discontent and disdain, there’s one thing else that’s fell in need of expectations as of late: eye-catching staff buses.

Former FIFA buses, just like the Mercedes O 302 coach pictured above, had been usually loud shows celebrating taking part groups within the event. When West Germany hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1974, Mercedes-Benz equipped a fleet of 16 O 302 coach buses for it.

The outside of every O 302 was uniquely painted and adorned for every nationwide staff. The buses had been painted a pale yellow with broad stripes within the nation’s colours. The nation’s title in German was branded on all sides of the bus in daring black block lettering. As an added touched aptitude, the nationwide flags of the staff had been mounted on the roof.

The venerable Bauhaus-styled bus was fitted with a naturally-aspirated inline-six-cylinder diesel engine. Probably the most highly effective model of the diesel engine produced 240 horsepower. Mercedes constructed over 32,000 O 302 buses throughout its manufacturing run from 1965 till 1976.

Mercedes-Benz states that the buses’ inside facilities had been thought-about luxurious within the Nineteen Seventies, regardless of that includes material seat covers. The German automaker claims the O 302 was the primary industrial bus that featured an air con system with its roof-mounted Thermo King unit. Every O 302 additionally featured an onboard bathroom, an ashtray at each seat and a beer faucet. I can’t consider something that might be a extra luxurious passenger expertise on the roads of Nineteen Seventies West Germany.

The 1974 Cup was a memorable one for West Germans. The formidable aspect drew into the identical first-round group as their fraternal and ideological rivals East Germany. East Germany defeated West Germany 1-0 to win the group, however each Germanys completed excessive sufficient within the group to advance to the subsequent spherical.

Their group stage match was the one time that West Germany performed communist East Germany in worldwide competitors. East Germany was equipped with a near-identical bus as West Germany. Although, the East German bus was branded DDR, for the German Democratic Republic, as a substitute of BR Deutschland.

West Germany reached the World Cup closing on the Olympiastadion in Munich, the place the staff confronted off in opposition to its most-hated rival, the Netherlands. By the twenty fifth minute, the match was stage at one objective apiece after a pair of penalty targets. Bayern Munich’s Gerd Müller scored the deciding objective within the forty third minute in entrance of the house crowd to safe Germany’s second of 4 FIFA World Cup titles.

The unique O 302 buses equipped for the ‘74 World Cup had been finally repurposed for common use, sans particular liveries after the event. Over time, the World Cup buses had been simply misplaced. To see one in individual, you’ll have to take a look at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. Sadly, the bus featured there’s a meticulously detailed reproduction of the West German nationwide staff’s bus.