Featuring Hemmings Motor News

A few of them are still out there. Ghostly. They're among the most iconic American motor vehicles of the 1950s, but the Scenicruiser has been gone for so many years now, a casualty of changing public tastes in long distance travel, that the sight of one on today's highways will spin heads for sure. 

Greyhound commissioned General Motors to build 1,001 examples of the high-decked, three-axle PD 4501 intercity coach, the bus it named the Scenicruiser, beginning in 1954. The coach is the long-distance bus industry's most memorable, and arguably the most successful, effort to capture riders as the nation's transportation metric was being bent by unforeseen post-war forces: a gradual erosion of passenger rail service, the emergence of jet travel, and the hand-in-glove boom of auto production and the Interstate highway system during the 1950s. 

Enduring relics of the grand, but short-lived, age of premium buses still gather on a not-quite-formal, nearly ad hoc basis. More exist than you might expect: Tom McNally, who helped put together this spring's SceniCruise 2010 in Amarillo, Texas, said that about 230 of the old Greyhound lions still exist. At one time, they could be had for virtually nothing, which partly explains why many were converted into homemade RVs. Those who remember spent quality time along old Route 66, hallowed blacktop ruled by Scenicruisers a lifetime ago. 

They visited highway landmarks, plus the town of Adrian, Texas, located at the midpoint of 66: It's west of Amarillo, and exactly 1,139 miles from both Chicago and Los Angeles. Ten of the Scenicruisers made the trip to Amarillo; their trips originated in Baltimore, California and the Midwest. Several, as you might expect, were conversions. Other days-gone coaches also make the run. These numbered one produced in the 1960s by Prevost of Sainte Claire, Quebec, Canada; and a later high-deck GM bus, the PD 4107, built from 1966 through 1969.

 One of the Scenicruiser's competitors also showed up, a three-axle 1971 Silver Eagle once run by Trailways. Historically speaking, the Scenicruiser was the first significantly successful 40-foot-long intercity coach before the industry switched en masse to buses that long. Tom, who lives in Peoria, Illinois, has traveled an uncommon, challenging route with his Scenicruiser. 

He restored the 1956-built PD 4501 to full Greyhound specifications from that year, including the proper seats. Tom found it in Weeds-port, New York, having been converted into a coach for a gospel choir and then, a church bus. ''I restored the outside and the interior. It still had the correct 8V-71 diesel and four-speed transmission. We had another Scenicruiser at the meet: Toward the end or their use, Greyhound converted about 100 of them to what they called combo cars, with an extra partition and an extra door at the rear, which hauled freight. 

They had a rear door on the side where a conveyor was connected so the packages could be removed. ''I've been into muscle cars for years. I still have two Pontiac GTOs, but I just wanted something different,'' Tom said. ''I guess it all started because my wife and I had two former racing greyhound dogs. Then my wife surprised me with a birthday trip aboard a Greyhound bus, and gave me a Greyhound book that had a Scenicruiser in it. 

On the trip, I saw that one was for sale in Hemmings Motor News. That was when I started really looking for one.''