Optare Solo

Apart from the purchase of the new Optare Solo SR vehicles for the Signature network in Solihull, Rotala has never ordered new Optare Solo buses for its own operations. Instead, a number of second-hand examples have been acquired in recent years, covering a variety of vehicle lengths and seating capacities. Many of these vehicles were initially allocated to the Long Acre depot, where they operated a mixture of commercial and tendered services. Following the acquisition of the Redditch and Kidderminster depots from First Midland Red in March 2013, a number of Solos were transferred to those garages to strengthen the fleet. Their use, however, was not without problems, as their relatively low seating capacity made them a poor replacement for the larger single-deck vehicles previously operated by First on many of the routes. The acquisition of Johnson's Coaches' bus operations in May 2022 brought two further Optare Solo vehicles into the Diamond Bus fleet. Numbered 20028 and 20029, these vehicles joined the existing Solo fleet and continued the company's policy of acquiring second-hand examples rather than purchasing new vehicles.