On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:25:02 GMT, Jeff
wrote:
>They also built fire trucks, like the original Engine 51 of Emergency!
>and this tanker: http://www.crownisking.org/cutularetender.html. <snip>
Crown's Fire Coach was one of its biggest profit makers, and, being a
hometown product, was always ordered by LACityFD and LACoFD without
outside bidding for decades. The same went for LA Unified School
District and many other surrounding districts for the school buses.
The reason was clear...a conventional had a life span of about ten
years, give or take. A Crown would easily last and be economically
feasible for 30 or more. Many Crowns built in the '70s are still on
the road today, schlepping school kids to and from school. However,
Crown's 1948-design all aluminum body didn't fare well in any place
other than the West...corrosion was its big enemy if road salts were
used, like with any other vehicle. Since use of road salt has been
banned in California from the earliest days, Crowns found their homes
usually out here, as did the products of "friendly competitor," Gillig
Brothers of Hayward.
Why did Crown and Gillig go for all-aluminum bodies in the post war
era, following the lead of Yellow Coach (later GMC Truck and Coach) in
'41? Easy...surplus aircraft after WW II made aluminum dirt cheap in
comparison to sheet steel, then in short supply and subject to the
whims and greed of US Steel and Bethlehem (read up on Harry S Truman's
presidency for more on that) and lightened body weight enough to
provide a 35 or 40' transit-style chassis with a full length steel
frame and acceptable overall weight. GM later went to monocoque,
frameless design for their highway coaches, a revolutionary concept at
the time.
Blue Bird bought Crown and immediately cheapened the design,
"updating" its looks, but getting rid of a lot that made the Crown so
durable. They also stopped all Fire Coach production. Sad to see
another hometown industry go away, but, like Thomas Wolfe wrote, "You
can't go home again."
Crown Coach was the last user of Hall-Scott gasoline engines, another
old-time native California industry, for vehicular use in the US. The
Hall-Scott Model 440 and 925 "pancake" 6s were a throwback from the
1920s when Crown started building "conventional" buses, and were none
too efficient, although before the diesels took over, they had a long
and impressive service life...as well as an insatiable appetite for
gasoline. Hall-Scott pioneered the commercial use of the
hemispherical combustion chamber, contrary to popular belief that this
was a Chrysler innovation. In Crowns, the Hall-Scotts were replaced
by mostly Cummins 220 and 262 diesels by the end of the '50s,
although LA City FD kept ordering Hall-Scotts in their Fire Coaches
all the way though the '60s until Hall-Scott engine production ceased.
I remember the old Crown Coach factory on the east end of Downtown LA
in Boyle Heights, and remember visiting, watching all those School
Coaches and Fire Coaches being assembled by hand in the old brick
building's shop floor. That's back when the US was still an
industrial power, and people actually built things for a living. No
more, as we slide into "second world" status, victims of corporate
greed and globalization.
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