World’s first heavy duty off-road bus wins design award

The Torsus Praetorian has won a prestigious design award as the world’s first heavy duty off-road bus.

Czech-based Torsus, which was founded in 2016 and says it is ‘breaking new ground by designing, developing and manufacturing the world’s toughest off-road buses’, teamed up with transportation design studio Werkemotion to create the Praetorian.

It has been built to transport personnel and equipment across the world’s trickiest terrain, and uses a heavy-duty MAN chassis, engine and drivetrain. It uses Michelin off-road tyres, while the body panels are coated in Line-X, a military-grade material.

The Torsus Praetorian was handed the Red Dot Award in the Product Design category for 2020. This year, 6,500 products were entered for consideration, with jurors testing each one to give a detailed assessment and choose the best in design and innovation.

Vakhtang Dzhukashvili, founder and CEO of Torsus said: “It’s a privilege and an honour for us to be awarded the globally respected and admired Red Dot Award, for the outstanding design of our iconic Torsus Praetorian. We are very proud to accept this award and it is testament to the skilled work of the Torsus team and our design partners at Werkemotion who, together, helped produce the world’s toughest and most capable off-road bus.”

Bystrík Míček, CEO and design manager of Werkemotion, said: “We would like to congratulate Torsus on receiving the esteemed Red Dot award for Product Design. We are very proud to have worked alongside Torsus to design the world’s first off-road 4×4 bus and we are ecstatic they have been selected for what is, undoubtedly, one of the best product design awards in the world.”

Professor Dr. Peter Zec, founder and CEO of Red Dot said: “The winners of the Red Dot Award have proved that they have created excellent products worthy of winning an award. The products won over the jury not only through their aesthetic, but also thanks to their incomparable functionality. With their designs, the award winners are setting new standards in their industry. I wish to congratulate them most sincerely on their success.”