East Lancashire Coachbuilders Limited was a manufacturer of bus bodies and carriages founded in 1934 in Blackburn, Lancashire, England. In 1994 the company expanded into new premises and commenced a programme of development that resulted in a range of single and double deck buses which was the primary source of income for the company. On 17 August 2007, the company went into administration, but was saved and bought out by the Darwen Group the next day. It is thought that the problem was a direct consequence of changing to the Euro IV chassis, with a shortage of Scania chassis being a factor. After the purchase, the Darwen Group rebranded the company as Darwen East Lancs. In 2008, Jamesstan Investments, an investment company controlled by the Darwen Group, purchased another bus manufacturer, Optare. Later, in June 2008, a reverse takeover was performed, with the Darwen name disappearing in favour of Optare's. This brings East Lancs name into the Optare Group, with an expanded range of vehicles. Production of all the original East Lancs bodies ceased by 2011, and the premises in Blackburn closed in 2012.
Products
Past
East Lancs has had many different styles of bodywork. They had a tradition of using cacography, mostly replacing a letter i with a letter y, which continued until the Esteem and Olympus series.
In the early 1990s, East Lancs created a new style of bus body. Like most East Lancs buses, this body style didn't have a definite name and was named by its chassis as follows: ;Double-decker
Hyline, a high-floor variant of the standard Myllennium single-decker body but used to re-body older chassis
Until bought by Darwen
The generation until East Lancs went into administration continues the tradition of misspelt names but each has a different name and does not vary on the chassis.
Scania series
This series are the last surviving variants of the myllennium series. They are now part of their own series. These have the standard body but with Scania own front styling. ;Single-decker
The Kinetec series was launched at the Euro Bus Expo 2006. They are designed as low-floor bodies for MAN chassis. They have the Esteem/Olympus body but with MAN's own Lion's City design front and rear. ;Single-decker
Kinetec
;Double-decker
Kinetec+
East Lancs subsidiaries
East Lancs also ran sub-divisions of the company, in addition to the production of buses:
British City Bus
East Lancs Overseas - The export of East Lancs buses
NW Bus & Coach Repairs - A bus and coach repairs business in the North West of England
