1934 Austin Utility Coach bus, one of a kind!

Here is the 1934 Austin Utility Coach bus my grandad got in the 60s. A couple had been moving from California to Missouri when the bus broke down here in Texas. My grandad came across them and heard their story. In exchange for the bus, my grandad gave them a ride to the bus station and two bus tickets. My grandad had wanted it just for its aluminum content, but fortunately it never got s****ped. This one had been converted into a camper using the rear bench for a fold out bed which is still there. This is 1 or 18 originally built in 1933 and 1934 before GM hired Dwight Austin. I'd love to see this wind up in the hands of a museum and someone who can give it a proper restoration. Here's an article with more about Austin Utility, http://www.coachbuilt.com/bui/a/austin/austin.htm






Here is a picture of a 1933 model

 

COOL! How was it powered? and a pusher.

 

Hell with a museum, I would love to have it to turn it back into a Hippy bus for retirement. That would be cool to the bone.

 

neat project i am sure there is someone out there just waiting for something like this......

 

It's rear engined. I will get some pics of the engine bay up sometime this week.

 

Fantastic cool bus. How about donating it to a school?

Pic from the above article:

 

Bad ***, that's all I can say. If had the room...........

 

Quote from the above article:

"A single Austin Utility Coach is known to have survived the s**** metal drives of World War II. Purchased in East L.A. for $400 and converted into a motor home by Pat Patterson and family in 1948, the 1933 Utility Coach survived at least into the mid 50s before it was s****ped."

So is this vehicle the last survivor, or is there another one out there the author was unaware of? In any case, it may be the rarest semi-production vehicle anyone discusses on the HAMB this month. It'd be a shame to see it s****ped or rotted beyond recovery.

 

My guess is they are talking about this same one, and don't know that it wasn't s****ped, since that was the OP's granddad's original intent.

 

Seriously weird drivetrain! What engine was used in the Austin?

jack vines

 

Well this one is a 1934, and I'll have to see if I can find out the name of the previous owners. Also I'm not sure if my grandad would have told them he got it just for the metal content at the time.

 

I'd take it on; first learned bodywork in a place called The Truck Works, mainly semis' and buses, lots of aluminum work. Very cool indeed!

 

man that bus is to cool , id love to follow a restoration or revamp of that beast ,

 

Very cool. Odd that all the roof sheets are missing.

The Austin Patent was what allowed Yellow Coach and later GMC to dominate the bus building business.

One of the features that GM used in construction, and probably designed also by Austin was using Z and hat shaped channels for riviting the panels to. Instead of box tubing that rotted away from the inside out.

Also interesting that the entrance door is fabricated out of aluminum also. Most smaller independent manufacturers used wood for the leaves of the doors, even into the 50's.

This definitly should be a museum piece. So many advanced features for that era.

Thanks for the pictures.

PS: the "Coachbuilt" site says 18 of the "Nite Coaches" were built. This is not a Nite Coach, they were huge highway buses. These little transits were built after them and it says "only a handful" were ever made. Very rare.
Buses were not generally s****ped during the WW2 s**** drives as public transit was a neccesary thing during the war. Many buses were even manufactured during the war and were painted gray and distributed by the Gov't to companies that needed more equipment. Even Ford got in on building little transits during the war with rear mounted flatheads.

 

I have an article, somewhere, about this bus. It used a Buick 8 with the specially built angle drive trans and diff.
Edit: The article may have been about the later GM transit buses. Still, I bet it's still a Buick engine

 

An old timer told me during WWII some buses were powered by Buick straight 8s using two of the cylinders for air compression and the remaining 6 cylinders to propel the bus.

 

If the NASDAQ hits 3200 before this thread peters out, I'll take it. Okay, maybe 3500.

The quoted article noted that the early versions ran a Waukesha engine of some sort. Wonder if one could get a ***mins ISB in there without cutting metal, or a Detroit Diesel 2-stroke clatter-factory. That angle drive was typical of Yellow/GM/whatever buses for a long time thereafter, including applications with much beefier motors. I have no idea how common the parts are for those setups.

 

I took some more pictures the other day. My dad said he wants to sell it. What is something like this even worth and who's going to buy it?

 

You should contact the Lane motor museum in Nashville. This would fit right into their collection.

 

Hello
Do you still have this bus?

 

Would be interesting but he was seen the last time around here more than three years ago. The thread didn't move since 20 years.