The Flxible Co. was an American manufacturer of motorcycle sidecars, funeral cars, ambulances, intercity coaches and transit buses, based in the U.S. state of Ohio. It was founded in 1913 and closed in 1996. The company's production transitioned from highway coaches and other products to transit buses over the period 1953–1970, and during the years that followed, Flxible was one of the largest transit-bus manufacturers in North America.
Detroit Diesel Corporation(DDC) is an American diesel engine manufacturer headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. It is a subsidiary of Daimler Truck North America, which is itself a wholly owned subsidiary of the multinational Daimler Truck AG. The company manufactures heavy-duty engines and chassis components for the on-highway and vocational commercial truck markets. Detroit Diesel has built more than 5 million engines since 1938, more than 1 million of which are still in operation worldwide. Detroit Diesel's product line includes engines, axles, transmissions, and a Virtual Technician service.
The Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company was an early manufacturer of passenger buses in the United States. Between 1923 and 1943, Yellow Coach built transit buses, electric-powered trolley buses, and parlor coaches.
Gillig is an American designer and manufacturer of buses. The company headquarters, along with its manufacturing operations, is located in Livermore, California. By volume, Gillig is the second-largest transit bus manufacturer in North America. As of 2013, Gillig had an approximate 31 percent market share of the combined United States and Canadian heavy-duty transit bus manufacturing industry, based on the number of equivalent unit deliveries.
The Eagle was a make of motor coach with a long and interesting history. During a period of over four decades, some 8,000 Eagle coaches were built in four countries on two continents. The coaches were a common sight on American highways and were strongly associated with Continental Trailways for over three decades.
The GM New Look bus is a municipal transit bus that was introduced in 1959 by the Truck and Coach Division of General Motors to replace the company's previous coach, retroactively known as the GM "old-look" transit bus.
The Detroit Diesel Series 92 is a two-stroke cycle, V-block diesel engine, produced with versions ranging from six to 16 cylinders. Among these, the most popular were the 6V92 and 8V92, which were V6 and V8 configurations of the same engine respectively. The series was introduced in 1974 as a rebored version of its then-popular sister series, the Series 71. Both the Series 71 and Series 92 engines were popularly used in on-highway vehicle applications.
The Rapid Transit Series (RTS) city bus is a long-running series of transit buses that was originally manufactured by GMC Truck and Coach Division during 1977, in Pontiac, Michigan. First produced in 1977, the RTS was GMC's offering of an Advanced Design Bus design (the other entry was the Grumman 870 by competitor Flxible) and is the descendant of GMC's prototype for the U.S. Department of Transportation's Transbus project. The RTS is notable for its then-futuristic styling featuring automobile-like curved body and window panels; the Advanced Design Buses were meant to be an interim solution between the high-floor transit buses that preceded them, such as the GMC New Look (which had a curved windshield, but flat side glass and body panels), and modern low-floor buses that would facilitate passenger boarding and accessibility. Most current buses are now made by specialized coach manufacturers with flat sides and windows.
The GMC PD-4501 Scenicruiser, manufactured by General Motors (GM) for Greyhound Lines, Inc., was a three-axle monocoque two-level coach that Greyhound used from July 1954 into the mid-1970s. 1001 were made between 1954 and 1956.
The Allison V730 is a three-speed automatic transmission used in several makes of transit bus including the RTS, Canadian-produced Classic buses derived from the GM New Look, and Grumman Flxibles. Later production buses in the GM and Flxible line had the Allison V731 transmission, which is essentially the same unit but controlled electronically, with a keypad replacing the familiar shifter-lever in the driver's compartment.
The Detroit Diesel Series 71 is a two-stroke diesel engine series, available in both inline and V configurations, manufactured by Detroit Diesel. The number 71 refers to the nominal displacement per cylinder in cubic inches, a rounding off of 70.93 cu in (1.2 L).
The GM "old-look" transit bus was a transit bus that was introduced in 1940 by Yellow Coach beginning with the production of the model TG-3201 bus. Yellow Coach was an early bus builder that was partially owned by General Motors (GM) before being purchased outright in 1943 and folded into the GM Truck Division to form the GM Truck & Coach Division. The Yellow Coach badge gave way to the GM nameplate in 1944. Production of most "old-look" models was stopped upon the release of the GM New-Look bus in 1959, however some smaller "old-look" models continued to be built until 1969. Approximately 38,000 "old-look" buses were built during the 29-year production run. The "old-look" name is an unofficial retronym applied to this series of GM buses after the release of the GM New-Look series.
The GM TDH-4801 and TDM-4801 were a special series of GM "old-look" transit buses that were produced between 1953 and 1958 and which were designed to maintain a maximum rear axle weight load of no more than 16,500 pounds (7.5 t). The reason for this was due to a requirement in California at the time that buses more than 35 feet (11 m) in length or 96 inches (2.4 m) in width could only be operated under special authorization from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), and the CPUC had denied authorization for the TDH-5105 partially due to its weight. Both the TDH-4801 and TDM-4801 have an unusual vehicle length of 37 feet 9 inches (11.5 m) and a seating capacity of only 48. Both models are 102 inches wide. The TDH-4801 was equipped with an automatic transmission and 547 were built between 1953 and 1958. The TDM-4801 was equipped with a manual transmission and 75 were built in 1954.
The Gillig Phantom is a series of buses that was produced by an American manufacturer Gillig Corporation in Hayward, California. The successor to the long-running Gillig Transit Coach model line, the Phantom marked the transition of Gillig from a producer of yellow school buses to that of transit buses. The first transit bus assembled entirely by Gillig, the Phantom was produced exclusively as a high-floor bus.
The GM "Buffalo" bus is a colloquial term referring to several models of intercity motorcoaches built by the GM Truck and Coach Division at Pontiac, Michigan, between 1966 and 1980. "Buffalo" coaches have a stepped roof in front, and the first three rows of seats are at different levels, mounted on stepped floors resembling some types of theater seating.
The Detroit Diesel 149 is a series of two-stroke diesel engines manufactured by Detroit Diesel which were first announced in early 1966. After Detroit Diesel was spun off in 1988 and later acquired by MTU, production of Series 149 engines was discontinued around 2000.
The Flxible Metro is a transit bus that was assembled and manufactured by the Flxible Corporation from 1983 until 1995. From 1978 until early-1983, when Flxible was owned by Grumman, the model was known as the Grumman 870, with a Grumman nameplate. The earlier model 870 experienced a large number of major design defects and deficiencies, some of which led to the filing of lawsuits against the company by purchasers, and the successor "Metro" model addressed those defective design issues.
The Crown-Ikarus 286 is a type of transit bus that was manufactured for the U.S. market from 1980 until 1986, under a joint venture between the Ikarus Body and Coach Works (Ikarus), of Budapest, Hungary, and Crown Coach Corporation from Los Angeles, California in the United States. Loosely based on the Ikarus 280, the Crown-Ikarus 286 is a high-floor articulated bus.
The GM PD-4103 was a single-decker coach built by GMC, in the United States, in 1951 and 1952. It was a 37- or 41-passenger Parlor-series highway coach and was an improved version of the earlier PD-4102 "transition" model. A total of 1501 were built, 900 in 1951 and 600 in 1952, plus one that was converted by GMC from a PD-4102. In early 1953, this model was replaced by the groundbreaking PD-4104 "Highway Traveler". The PD-4103 competed directly with, and surpassed in sales, a similar model from ACF-Brill Corporation, the IC41.
The Flyer 700/800/900 series were a series of transit buses built in three generations by Western Flyer and its successors Flyer Industries and New Flyer, of Canada, between 1967 and 1987. Except for brief overlap during transition from one generation to the next, they were not in production concurrently. All individual model designations included a prefix of either D, for diesel propulsion, or E, for electrically powered trolleybuses, with the first digit indicating the generation and the last digit indicating a variant within the generation. The introductory model was the D700, originally released in 1967 for the Canadian transit market, and the last series group to be produced, D900, was discontinued in 1987. Flyer had become New Flyer only the year before, in 1986.
