(Northern) in Dundee, Forfar, Arbroath, Blairgowrie and Montrose. A bright blue and orange livery was adopted for the fleet, which would be controlled from Dundee. The company would have a turbulent infancy, however, as Strathtay Scottish faced very heavy competition from Perth-based operator Stagecoach. Strathtay Scottish purchased a number of ex-London Transport AEC Routemaster buses to compete with Stagecoach, which also used a number of the same vehicle type on city services in Perth. A new Perth City Transport brand was created by Strathtay Scottish to compete with Stagecoach, using a mainly red livery with white. But as Stagecoach grew nationally it became financially stronger and had ready access to vehicles from the larger companies in England it had purchased; Strathtay's managing director, Neil Renilson, would later move to Stagecoach in 1989. Strathtay Scottish could not sustain the level of intense competition that ensued, and in 1993 it closed its Perth depot. Crieff and Pitlochry also closed, and the company withdrew from the majority of services around these towns. Despite experiencing heavy and sustained competition on the lucrative city services in Perth, Strathtay Scottish managed to remain profitable on the run up to privatisation, and in May 1991 was sold to Barnsley-based Yorkshire Traction for £1.9 million. Now trading as Strathtay Buses under the Traction Group, the new owners established and maintained a working relationship with Stagecoach around Perth, jointly operating the trunk service between Dundee and Perth with the national operator, while the remainder of the operations remained largely unchanged from privatisation. On 14 December 2005, the Traction Group was purchased by Stagecoach for £26 million, which resulted in Strathtay becoming a subsidiary of Stagecoach East Scotland. Unusually, buses were initially branded with modified Strathtay fleetnames, however the fleet has since been rebranded to "Stagecoach Strathtay". References External links Stagecoach Strathtay website Stagecoach Group bus operators in Scotland Companies based in Fife Transport in Angus, Scotland Transport in Aberdeenshire Transport in Dundee Transport in Fife Transport in Perth and Kinross 1985 establishments in Scotland Transport companies established in 1985