The Pennine VII was born from the Scottish Bus Group’s desire to have a rugged mid engined single decker for general bus and coach use in the mid ‘70s. Whilst the SBG were already taking a large number of Leyland Leopard buses they wished to incorporate the trusted Gardner engine so favoured by the SBG at the time. Leyland Motors declined the request to fit Gardner engines to the Leopard so the SBG looked elsewhere. Seddon Motors were to build the 11m Pennine VII a rugged no nonsense chassis around the Gardner 6HLXB engine, ZF 4 speed manual gearbox and Eaton axles. Over 500 chassis were built with all but handful going to the Scottish Bus Group. Six of these were 12m examples delivered with 6-speed ZF gearboxes and Alexander M Type bodies for the Edinburgh- London service. The remainder were 11m examples the later ones with semi automatic gearboxes and all bodied by Plaxton or Alexander both Y and T Types.

Delivered new to Western SMT in June 1977 and allocated fleet number NS2670, this vehicle entered service from Ardrossan Garage in the traditional Black & White coach livery. She operated on a variety of local & long distance services including regular turns on the Lancashire Coast Express services as well as some Private Hire. In October 1981 when Ardrossan Garage closed she was transferred to Kilmarnock becoming KS2670.

In October 1982 she was repainted into Western’s Red & Cream bus livery. She continued in service at Kilmarnock and was again repainted, this time into the Black & White and two tone Grey stripes livery in 1986.

2670 was withdrawn from service in November 1987. In March 1988 she was sold to SBG Engineering and became number D15 in their Hire Fleet. Later this fleet was to be renamed Bus and Coach Rental and she remained there until August 2001 when she was purchased for preservation. Stored for about 18 months work is now progressing and it is anticipated to overhaul the bodywork over the forthcoming winter. Eventually she will be returned to the original Western Black & White livery.