Jonckheere

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A 1990 Jonckheere Deauville with Volvo chassis, operated by Scancoaches of London.
Photo credit: Dougie Macdonald

A Jonckheere Monaco double-deck coach of Len Wright Band Services

A 1993 Jonckheere Monaco double-deck coach with Nissan Diesel chassis, operated by Yokohama City Bus.

A VDL Jonckheere SH touring coach at the Busworld 2007 exhibition in Kortrijk, Belgium

Jonckheere is a motor coach and bus builder. Founded in 1881 by Henri Jonckheere in Roeselare, Belgium.

In 1881, Henri Jonckheere began to build horse drawn carriages in the town of Beveren, near Roeselare in the province of West-Flanders, Belgium.

In 1902, Henri Jonckheere built his first "luxury automobile". In those days many, largely wooden bodies with their typical styling, were built upon several famous chassis such as Minerva and Rolls-Royce.

In 1922, Henri's son and successor Joseph Jonckheere built his first bus body. Yet car bodies were still a large part of the production until early 1930s.

Joseph Jonckheere moved all of the production to bus and coach building, making Jonckheere the Belgian market leader. Jonckheere was also becoming a famous and well-known name throughout Europe.

After the second world war, there was a huge need for vehicles for road transport, which included of course a lot of buses and coaches. Jonckheere was able to meet quickly all new market trends.

The product range included luxury touring coaches, city and intercity buses, articulated buses but also heavy duty buses for world-wide export and several special bodies.

In the 1970s, Jonckheere launched the Bermuda that started appearing un the UK in 1977 and stayed in production until 1982.

In 1981, Jonckheere celebrated its first century with a touring coach with the appropriate name of Jubilee. The range included a low floor P599 model, regular P50 model, P99 double decker and P90 semi-decker.

In 1989, Jonckheere launched the Deauville model and in 1994 the Monaco double deck model. Its current range model is theMistral model. In 1994 Jonckheere became a part of the Berkhof Group which was subsequently acquired by VDL Groep in 1998.

In 2003, the official name of Jonckheere was changed to VDL Jonckheere.

In 2005, a new high-specification coach was launched in Europe. The SH-series was initially available on the rear-engined Volvo B12B chassis. The demonstartion model was built to a height of 3.8m. However, when introduced to the UK, it may be built slightly lower. The "bulge" over the first half of the coach, conceals the air-conditioning unit.