Every year, over 3 billion transit bus rides are taken in the United States. The humble city bus is a staple of any good city, but these important vehicles often reach the business end of a scrapper once their service lives are over. This 1971 “Flxible New Look” lucked out and got to live a more glamorous life. For decades, it’s been living as an RV, and once you see what it looks like inside you might do a double take. The price might be just as attractive.
Those who don’t want to pay an absurd price for a motorhome, or who want something you can’t buy from Indiana (home of the RV industry), might want to turn to a conversion. Buying or building a converted bus opens up so many possibilities. You just have to be fine with knowing you might have to fix something yourself when something breaks. Oh, and you might not have diagrams or anything to work with.
Many Americans choose the school bus as the basis of their builds, and there’s a good reason to. School buses are seriously durable vehicles, and many of them are relatively straightforward to run and maintain.
However, school buses often run into the issue of not having much headroom and they drive more or less like heavy trucks with a steel body on top. Those wanting a bit more refinement, or perhaps not wanting to raise a roof, may choose a coach bus or a transit bus. While coach buses are perhaps the best buses to turn into motorhomes, don’t discount the city bus. Retired transit buses still benefit from air suspension, low floors, high roofs, built-in air-conditioners, and an aesthetic that tends to convert into a motorhome a bit cleaner than a school bus.
That’s what we’re looking at here. This Flxible New Look isn’t just a classy piece of history, but a bit over two decades ago it was turned into an RV that surprises even me. I had to check the photos to make sure there weren’t two vehicles in the same listing.
The Other ‘New Look’
If this bus looks familiar, but you just can’t put your finger on it, that might be because you might remember the original bus to have this sort of “fishbowl” front-end design. That was the iconic GM New Look bus, one of the vehicles I’m crazy enough to call a dream car.
While General Motors dominated the transit bus and highway coach industries, the likes of Flxible (pronounced “flexible”) always tried to nip at the heels of the giant from Michigan. Flxible started its life as the maker of an innovative flexible motorcycle sidecar before eventually finding success in designing some of the most beautiful buses ever constructed.
Launched in 1959, GM’s New Look bus (above) was a revolutionary step forward with its high performance, massive windows, and beautiful, durable body. For many transit operations, the New Look became the default option. Over time, the New Look became an icon, even earning some solid run time on the silver screen. The GM New Look became synonymous with “transit bus.” Just like how every facial tissue became a Kleenex, GM’s competition was also commonly referred to as “New Look.”
Flxible, which had in the previous decade become a more serious player in the bus industry by absorbing the operations of Fageol Twin Coach, couldn’t let that stand.
In 1961, the bus maker fired off its response to GM’s masterpiece. The Flxible “New Look,” which really had a more boring alphanumeric official name, looked like it tried to copy GM’s homework. The two buses had similar parallelogram windows, fluted aluminum siding, diesel power, and a goofy fishbowl-like windshield arrangement.
Yet, most transit agencies stuck with GM, allowing the giant to move over 44,000 units. This Flxible New Look was just one of the 13,121 examples that left one of Flxible’s factories until 1978.
This Crafty Transit Bus Conversion
This 1971 Flxible New Look is a beauty. The specific model you’re looking at here is a 111CC-C3 or a 411CC-C3. See what I mean about the boring official name?
The first number indicates a build location in either Loudonville, Ohio (1) or Evergreen, Alabama (4). The “11” that shows up next indicates it’s a transit bus with a transverse engine while the first “C” immediately after indicates that it’s a 40-footer. Then there’s another “C” denoting 102 inches in width. Finally, you have the “C3,” which means this bus is equipped with a Cummins V903.
That Cummins is an important addition. Back in the 1970s, GM still sold its longest buses with V6 Detroit Diesels, so Flxible thought it would get the edge against GM by planting a 14.8-liter Cummins V8 diesel in the rear of its longest transit buses. In its original form, which is likely what’s in this bus, a V903 made 280 HP on the low end. But, I know you love details, you should know that variants of this engine are still in production today and are found in Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Cummins says the hottest version it’ll sell you today has 760 ponies contained in its red block.
A paper in SAE International says that design goals for the V903 included high reliability and durability while still returning high thermal efficiency. In other words, the V903 appears to be one of those engines that are in it for the long haul.
Sadly, the seller, Kodi, doesn’t indicate what this bus did for the first 20 years of its life. However, she notes that the bus was converted in the late 1990s by the couple who owned it. That means it’s been an RV for almost half of its life already.
The conversion from transit bus to motorhome was extensive. As I said earlier, these buses featured parallelogram windows. This bus was also manufactured with two sets of transit-style entry doors. The builders had to rip those windows and those doors out, patch in an entirely enclosed front end, and graft in RV-style windows. Even the destination sign was ripped out, which isn’t something you always see due to the extra work involved.
One of your only reminders about this coach’s transit bus past is the position of the now long entry door. It’s in the exact place that the coach’s old rear folding doors used to be, but even it is now a more RV-style panel. The rear of the bus, which would have had an expansive window in the transit version, is now a flat back like a Class A motorhome would have.
Whoever did this work was clearly pretty talented at it. Nerds like me could tell it used to be a transit bus, but I’m not sure a regular person just driving down the highway would notice it as anything other than a motorhome. Even the roof looks like normal RV fare with air horns, two air-conditioners, and a satellite dish.
The impressive work continues inside, where honestly, this thing looks like it came from the factory as an RV. The front of the coach looks like where a couple would sit in a Winnebago and the L-shaped leather sofa behind the driving compartment even matches the captain’s chairs. That living room even has a TV and sound system in the same spot you’d expect it to be in a coach built by one of the big corporations.
Then you move back to the kitchen and yeah, those office chairs look out of place, but it otherwise appears to be phenomenal. There’s a nice refrigerator there, a sizable microwave, a sink I’m sure my wife would find more than usable, and a neat stove. It’s hard to tell, but it looks like this coach has been updated at least once since it was built in the ’90s. After all, I’m not seeing any CRTs bolted to a shelf here.
Moving back from there, you’ll see a full bathroom with a walk-in shower and the primary bedroom, which has a pretty sizeable bed. Now, before you panic about that headliner, Kodi says that the coach has no leaks at all (it does have a nice metal roof), but the adhesive holding the headliner panel up is getting old. So, it’s getting a little bit like your old Volkswagen.
Kodi also says the tires are also on the older side, but they don’t present with any weather cracking and there’s plenty of tread left. The bus is backed with an Allison transmission and is said to run and drive great. It even has new batteries and a working Onan generator.
One mystery is regarding mileage. When Kodi got the bus its title and odometer both read 11,000 miles. But that can’t be right given the coach’s past as a transit bus. If I had to wager a guess, the odometer was reset during the conversion in the 1990s. But that would also mean that this bus hasn’t done much driving in over two decades, which would also explain the old tires.
All of that being said, this bus looks far better inside than the nuke bus Flxible I wrote about six months ago. It looks like whoever built this one was aiming for something that looks like it came from Indiana, but based on a bulletproof platform. Personally, I love how the wood throughout the coach is the same. Too many builders end up mixing materials and stuff like that sticks out.
Kodi is hoping someone will come to Portland, Oregon, and pick this old bus up for the price of $30,000. While this ride isn’t nearly as fancy or as powerful as a Class A today, it’s also a fraction of the cost. Then again, it’s also been for sale for several weeks, so maybe the right price might be a little south of $30,000. Either way, I don’t hate it.
Many transit buses are sent to the scrapyard in the sky when they’re all used up by their respective cities. Others end up rotting in fields. Someone decided to take an old, retired bus and upcycled it into a pretty sweet motorhome. That’s something I can always get behind and hope to see more of this for decades to come.
(Images: Kodi K via Facebook Marketplace, unless otherwise noted.)
A 1971 Flxible made in Loudonville? There’s a good chance my dad might have helped build that one. He worked there in the early 1970s. I’ll have to ask him which years specifically.
That is a gorgeous motor home! I would think she can get $30k easily. Perhaps it’ll sell in the spring, when people want to get outdoors.
Interesting conversion and has my interest. I wonder does it have waste tanks or a shitcase?
I would make the couch a fold down so I can bring the kid. Just stay away from campgrounds with the 10 year old rule.
Finally get an inspection to make sure that droopy ceiling is old glue and not water intrusion as the seller states. Trust but verify.
All in all, it’s the equivalent of a $150,000+ new motor home, but likely to outlast a ’25 model built in Indiana. Using an old bus chassis is a great idea, because it’s not going to fall apart.
On the other hand, a used motor home is… sitting on someone else’s used couch, and sleeping in someone else’s used bed.
Replace those, and this is an excellent motor home for someone who wants one.
“sitting on someone else’s used couch, and sleeping in someone else’s used bed.”
… Do you never visit friends and family? Stay in hotels?
I mean, sure, byo sheets but replacing the couch?
Neat conversion of a fairly rare bus.
Gentle correction – GM Fishbowls were offered with a variety of Detroit Diesels. 6-71s, 6v71s, 8V71s, and eventually 6v92s at the end. The V8s are actually the most common. But the sixes sound the best.
They were also offered with 1spd (with a lockup torque converter so they feel like two), 2spd, and 3spd automatics, and 4spd manuals. I’ve driven all three automatic variations – the one you want is an 8v71 with the 3spd. The 1spds are slooooooooow, and geared for about 40mph flat out.
This explains a lot. As a kid, I remember all (GM) city buses in Detroit sounding like they had CVT transmissions before CVT transmissions were invented. The engine would rev to about 2500 rpm but the bus would not move. Eventually it would start rolling, but the sound of the engine never changed. I recall hearing some of the buses appear to shift, but most did not. Between this and the appearance that a city bus would get hung up on the belly at a railroad crossing, I’ve always tended to have a bit of scorn for city busses.
Yup, probably the 1spd. Suuper loose torque converter, so they pretty much go to almost peak revs and sit there howling until it catches up. If they got going fast enough, the torque converter lockup feels like a shift. The two speeds aren’t much different, though they feel like they have two shifts, once into high and then the TC lockup.
I only drove the transit buses as a fill-in driver – it’s SOOOO boring going around the same loop for a whole shift. Going out in a coach was a lot more fun, and they were much nicer to drive too. The couple of 1spds also had the fun of not having power steering. Roughly 200 turns lock to lock, and even then you could barely turn the damned thing until the bus was moving.
It’s odd that they squared off the exterior roof but the inside is still the rounded roof. Did they just slap a new roof over the existing one?
“Fageol”
What are company names that could never be done today?
Worse, it’s pronounced like “fragile”.
Fragile? Must be Italian.
I hate how the top was squared off.
I also wonder how well a bus geared for city driving will be on the highway. Is the top speed like 55mph?
Agreed. That rear 3/4 made me do a double-take. I thought maybe this was an in-process photo where they were driving the roofless version to have a new one put on.
Not all transit buses are geared for city driving. Many of them, like my own RTS, do have highway gears that will get you to a real highway top speed. My RTS will do 70 mph before the engine limiter kicks in.
The reason for this is that some of these buses need to go on high-speed roads to complete their routes, so they’re ordered with that kind of gearing. Sometimes the gearing is also swapped out during RV conversions, too.
IIRC Flexible started offering a 3 speed Allison V-Drive automatic during the 70s, Our local (greater MSP) transit agency started buying the 3 speeds when they added freeway service between Minneapolis and St.Paul.
Not all of them were used in cities. There were also “Suburban” buses with coach seats that were geared for 65-70. But for the university fleet I drove for back in the day (best work study job EVER) most of them would do about 45-50 for the 2psd autos and 60ish for the 3spds. But anyone using a transit bus as the basis of an RV conversion is going to regear them for more than that.
I sure hope so! Back in 2019, I saw a Chicago Bears-themed school bus conversion for sale on Facebook. I still laugh at what the first sentence in the description said: “Top speed is 45 mph.” That bus must have never left the city, even as a motorhome!
Walter Payton could run faster than 45mph…
It better be, hotshot!
I understand that the new windows are probably better at sealing out the elements and providing more light into the cabin but they don’t fit with the design of the bus. It also looks like they had to modify the roof to accommodate the windows so it might not be as weatherproof as advertised.
It would have been nice if they left at least one or two of the original ones for style reasons, maybe even just over the sink
It looks like the squared-off roofline is really just falsework to act as an attachment point for the awnings above the windows. You can see from the interior pictures that the roofline wasn’t raised or changed on the inside. It’s functional, I suppose, and it allows the use of really big windows which was pretty standard in the 90s to give a bigger, more open feel to the interior. Unfortunately, big windows really increase the cooling or heating requirements in an RV — which is why windows have gotten smaller, particularly on the bigger Class A rigs. (And with modern slide-outs, you don’t need as much glass to give the illusion of more space, anyway.) If this were a modern conversion, it would be acceptable to reduce the window height a bit and the roofline could have remained intact, while still leaving a few inches of vertical, blank metal above to attach the roller shades.
Another 90’s flashback is all the work done to eliminate the front entry door and build up the center-entry door to match the bodywork. At the time, it was still conventional. But motor coach-style front entry doors have become more popular, making this conversion instantly look dated. Front entries often allow for less-steep steps, and a longer run of handrail on the right. You board just like on a motor coach, with comfortable steps and a secure handhold, instead of stepping up into a hallway where your handhold disappears even as you take your last step up, which is not as comfortable. The trade-off is that the passenger seat has to be moved back a bit further from the dashboard, even if the stairwell can be covered with a trapdoor — but there’s a certain amount of safety advantage to moving that seat back as well, and the driver gets a little more side visibility with the passenger further back. It’s likely the stairwell is still there as part of the bus structure; it might be worth bringing it back and either plugging that center door or leaving it as an emergency exit.