Thirty-two Dunedin residents rode in style to Queenstown on Sunday, on the first Mount Cook Denning Jumboliner, made in 1977.
The Otago Heritage Bus Society excursion was a rare opportunity for the day-trippers - primarily members of the Dunedin Camera Club - to travel in what was once considered one of the most luxurious vehicles on New Zealand roads.
Bus society deputy chairman Peter Dowden said the 42-seater bus, owned by society chairman Philip Riley, formerly of Queenstown and now living in Melbourne, was halfway through restoration.
It was formerly owned by Good Time Tours and before that McDermotts. Mr Riley bought it for about $20,000 and in the past year the society had helped refurbish parts of it, most recently the exterior which had been returned to its original colour scheme.
Permission had been obtained from Air New Zealand to reinstate the original logo - a Mount Cook lily - on the exterior of the bus.
When the bus was first commissioned as ''501 City of Wellington'' it was used as an express coach service on a daily return trip between Auckland and Wellington.
Later it plied the tourist route from Christchurch to Mt Cook and Queenstown, Mr Dowden said.
''In this day and age it doesn't look like much, but when these were first introduced, there was nothing anywhere near as good in New Zealand.
''It had things like airbag suspension, an automatic gearbox and an onboard toilet, which are common today, but it was a pioneer of that type of [engineering].''
Mr Dowden said one of the other defining features of the bus was its ''very, very powerful,'' Detroit V6 engine.
''It isn't one of those you get stuck behind on the highway.''
