Musubi Car (Bus Manufacturer)

Municipal Supreme Bus Industries (Japanese: 結び目車公開有限会社, Hepburn: Musubime-sha kōkai yūgengaisha, commonly known as Musubi Car) is an Austrian-Japanese, American-domiciled bus manufacturer formed in 2001, specializing in the production of transit buses. When New flyer folded NABI in 2015, Musubi Car took over the bus manufacturing and assembly operations of the former company in Anniston, Alabama and continued construction of NABI bus models. The company since July 2003 is owned by German automaker Daimler-Benz and is mostly comprised of former NABI employees. It is also financed by the city of Vienna, the Bavarian state of Germany, and Deutsche Bank.

Founded in Japan, the Daimler-Benz division was named indirectly after Knott's Berry Farm, the current name in Japanese literally translates to "Knott Car," which was intended as a joke. The company briefly changed its branding in Japan to read "Nattsu kōchi Ando basu fāmu" before settling on its current name; the seemingly nonsensical phrase could be translated to "Knott's Coach and Bus Farm." The company's English trade name, Musubi Car, is a rough translation of the Japanese company name "Knott Car" and its registered name in English, Municipal Supreme Bus Industries, is also an acronym made from that name.

On March 30, 2001, Musubi Car announced its first major order: 15 transit and 89 suburban buses for JR Bus. Full delivery of this order was expected to commence late in the third quarter of 2003, however, although the company succeeded they had also secured a contract from the Tokyo Government to convert 17 buses from diesel to clean-burning CNG. The third order came from Sweden the following week, with 20 buses delivered to the transit agency in Boras. Following testing and evaluation of the first batch around Sweden, Boras placed an order for twenty more on April 17, 2001 and other European agencies soon placed orders. The company was also approached by Poland, with a few agencies placing orders for buses.

However, things went south. The finished buses had a number of issues during use, including doors that sheared off their hinges and windows that literally detached from their support braces and flew away, inflicting injuries on unfortunate bystanders. One of the regional transit authorities discovered that the total of 87 buses ordered in Vienna, Austria, which had ordered more buses from Musubi Car than any other European transit system, required a number of repairs and modifications. There were days when only about 50 of the 87 buses were operational due to problems and breakdowns and because the initial buses were built on poorly modified Isuzu and/or Toyota bus chassis with the body having an incorrect application of a monocoque structural system, adding to the structural strain of the bus body. By 2005, three Polish agencies aggressively filed a lawsuit against Musubi Car, alleging breach of contract. The lawsuit claimed that the company had been unable or unwilling to address all 107 of the defects in the total Musubi Car buses exported to Europe, which included frame cracks. Musubi Car retaliated by canceling all orders to Europe and recalling all buses exported to Europe because it hadn't yet established a proper facility.

Musubi Car opened two factories on May 17, 2003, in Hiroshima, Japan, and Ludwigsfelde, Germany. The company also changed its legal domicile from Japan to America, and its country of incorporation from Japan to Austria in July 2004. Musubi Car AG has been the company's name since then. Previously, the company shared tooling and production facilities with Hino Motors.

Musubi Car also announced its first major order in the United States: 125 transit and 87 suburban buses for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Full delivery of this order was expected to commence late in the third quarter of 2005, but due to events that would soon transpire, the agency imposed a cancellation of the order. Unlike the European incident however, the buses delivered to LACMTA were derived from the tooling used to make the European market Mercedes-Benz Citaro. This was because in early spring of that year Musubi car was sold to DaimlerChrysler (now Mercedes-Benz Group), and became part of the group Daimler Buses North America. All units completed for the Los Angeles transit authority at that point were rejected and resold to Merced County Transit (20 transits and 5 suburbans), the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (New York) (68 suburbans), and Dallas Area Rapid Transit (105 transits). As of 2010, all units delivered to the latter agencies have since been scrapped.

In 2006, Musubi Car became part of the DaimlerChrysler Commercial Buses North America as a subsidiary of Daimler. Musubi Car also manufactured a version of the Plaxton Beaver 2 engineered for the North American market, which was bodied on a special chassis that borrowed elements and its overall configuration from Freightliner step van chassis; the proprietary chassis also derived other components from the Freightliner Business Class M2, Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van chassis, and also to a lesser extent sourced a number of parts from the Mercedes-Benz Vario (drivetrain elements, steering column, engine, and instrument cluster).

On February 26, 2006, Musubi Car built a factory in Budapest, Hungary. The factory opened in the summer of 2007; however, Musubi Car had yet to win any significant orders to date since the LACMTA order.