Crown Coach Corporation
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Crown Coach Corporation (1914 - 1991) was a school bus manufacturer based in Los Angeles, California, eventually moving factory operations to Chino, California in San Bernadino County. Both factories have since been torn down; the property in Los Angeles is now a manufacturing center and the office and paint shed of the Chino property stood for a while longer and were eventually torn down as well. General Electric supposedly still owns this site. Since a large number of 30-plus year old Crown school buses are still in daily service, parts for them can be obtained through a company called West Coach, a company started by a group of former Crown Coach employees.
Crown Coach was the creator of the original large, flat nose (transit style or "Type D"), high capacity school bus. Their first example appeared in 1932. That vehicle still exists. Beginning as a motorized truck builder, Crown expanded into passenger vehicles and quit building trucks. Working with Tanner Grey Line of Los Angeles, Crown designed the well known art-deco 'Twinkie' shaped coach that eventually led to a school coach utilizing unibody construction, mid-ship underfloor mounted heavy duty commercial truck engines (often by the Detroit Diesel company) and off the shelf parts, which made them economical to operate. Starting with conventional steel skins, Crown later switched to rust resistant aluminum panels.
As regulations changed, the coach evolved into one of the safest, most reliable school buses. They were so well built that one of the factors that forced Crown to shut down was their product's extremely long life. Districts would send in their aging Crowns for rebuild, repaint and come back nearly new looking. The average school bus's service life is approximately ten years. There are many twenty-plus-year-in-school-service Crowns still roaming the roads of California and in personal possession as converted coaches. Many classic Crowns "retired" by school districts in the U.S. continue to see service in Mexico as local or neighborhood transit buses, private charters, and even cross-country tour coaches, often repainted in bright primary colors.
From 1951 to 1985, Crown Coach Corporation was also a manufacturer of fire apparatus under the Firecoach brand.
[edit] Products
- Firecoach
- Motorcoach/Tourcoach
- Transit Coach
- Supercoach
- SuperII (a Gillig Phantom school bus-inspired redesign of the original Supercoach)
- Specialty Vehicles
