Exclusive | NYC tour bus company displaying wrong city on sightseeing vehicle

Some Midtown tourists are being taken for a ride.

A Big Apple sightseeing bus tour company claims it unknowingly displayed the wrong city’s skyline on its vehicles for years – and is only now working to update its graphic design faux pas after The Post pointed out the error.

At least one bus on New York Iconic Tours’ fleet showcases another bustling American city – Chicago – instead of its namesake, save for a bizarrely cropped-in image of the Statue of Liberty at night, the company admitted.

The display touts the likes of the Windy City’s John Hancock Tower, Two Prudential Plaza, the Aon Center and Loyola University, among other iconic structures.

“NY Iconic Tours is aware that a legacy exterior graphic on one of our buses includes a stylized skyline image that does not accurately reflect New York City,” company owner Lister Jegede told The Post in a statement Monday.

Jegede added that the image came from an “older stock design used by a prior vendor and was not intended to depict a specific city skyline or to misrepresent New York City.” 

New York Iconic Tours, which operates in Midtown as Aurora Tourism Services, said it agrees “that our imagery should accurately represent NYC” and has already started the process of correcting and replacing the bus graphics.

While it’s unclear what the new design will be, the owner confirmed the updated design will be of an “entirely different artwork.”

A now-viral X post posted Saturday pointed out the obvious discrepancy on a New York Iconic Tours bus in SoHo — though social media users have been flagging the “embarrassing” mix-up for months online.

“Ah yes, the Hancock Tower of NYC,” one X user joked.

“The little-known Herald Square district of the loop!” another wrote.

The bus operator even addressed the poorly-cropped Empire State Building used on its buses, admitting that “while the Empire State Building overlay was intended to reflect that focus, we acknowledge that the overall execution was flawed.”

Jegede’s company started operating four double-decker buses as hop-on, hop-off tours in the fall of 2022 — and soon became embroiled in a battle with rival tour operators.

The issue has escalated so much that New York Iconic Tours has sued rival bus company Top View, which has allegedly been trying to edge out the competition with a “calculated” campaign of harassment, intimidation and even violent beatdowns of other drivers, The Post previously reported.

The “suicide squad” crew have also blown smoke from giant blunts in the faces of tourists and used megaphones to harass potential customers while they purchased tickets, Jegede’s suit claims.

The group has also broken phones belonging to Aurora workers, Jegede previously said — and even harassed a Post photographer, getting in his face and throwing hands toward his camera while yelling at him to “say something.”

On Monday, the tour operator said Top View has “subsequently doubled down” on its harassment following The Post’s coverage.

Attorneys for Top View have called the claims “demonstrably false,” and said the same company sued Jegede in federal court over trademark and impersonation allegations.