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Flxible Company History
The Flxible Co., (1913-1996), was a motorcycle sidecar,
funeral car, ambulance, intercity coach and transit bus manufacturing
company based in the United States which went out of business
in 1996.
In 1913, Hugo H. Young and Carl F. Dudte founded the
Flexible Sidecar Co. in Loudonville, OH to manufacture motorcycle
sidecars with a flexible mounting to the motorcycle. The flexible
mounting allowed the sidecar to lean on corners along with the
motorcycle, and was based on a design patented by Young. In 1919,
the company's name was changed to The Flxible Co. so the name
could by copyrighted and used as a trademark (the name continued
to be pronounced "flexible", however). After low-priced
cars became available in the 1920's, the motorcycle sidecar demand
dropped and in 1924 Flxible turned to production of funeral cars
(hearses), ambulances, and intercity buses, which were primarily
manufactured on Buick chassis, but also occasionally on Studebaker,
Cadillac, and Reo chassis. In 1953 Flxible absorbed the bus manufacturing
portion of the Fageol Twin Coach company, and accepted its first
order for transit buses from the Chicago Transit Authority. In
1964, Flxible purchased Southern Coach Manufacturing Co. of Evergreen,
AL and built small transit buses at the former Southern Coach
factory until 1976. Flxible was purchased by the Rohr Industries
in 1970, and a new factory and corporate headquarters was built
in Delaware, OH in 1974, with the original factory in Loudonville
being used to manufacture parts and subassemblies. Flxible was
sold to Grumman Corporation in 1978 and became known as Grumman
Flxible. The name reverted to Flxible when Grumman sold the company
in 1983 to General Automotive Corporation. In 1996 Flxible declared
bankruptcy and its assets were auctioned. The last Flxible vehicles
produced were eight 35-foot long CNG-fueled Metro buses that
went to Monterey Salinas Transit, in Monterey, CA. The former
Flxible factory in Loudonville is now a bus maintenance facility
for Motor Coach Industries (MCI) while the former factory in
Delaware now is now a parts facility for North American Bus Industries
(NABI), which was one of the companies that grew at the time
of Flxible's demise.
Flxible's intercity busses were very popular in Mexico
and Latin American countries, however high import duties into
these countries limited sales. In the early 1960's Flxible began
licensing a producer in Mexico, DINA S.A. (Diesel Nacional),
to manufacture Flxible designed intercity coaches, and this continued
until the late 1980's. In 1965 and 1966, Flxible also licensed
its "New Look" transit bus design to Canadair Ltd.,
an aircraft manufacturer in Ville St-Laurent, Quebec.
In 1994, Flxible's parent company General Automotive
Corporation, and three other American companies; Roger Penske,
Mark IV Industries, and Carrier, entered into a joint venture
with Changzhou Changjiang, a Chinese manufacturer in Jiangsu,
to produce buses based on the Flxible Metro design and with the
Flxible name. The resulting company, China Flxible Auto Corporation,
manufactures buses in a variety of lengths from 8 meters to 11
meters. These buses, which include both front and rear engine
designs, and share only their general exterior appearance with
the American-built Flxibles, are used by many transit operators
in major Chinese cities including Beijing and Shanghai.
Charles Kettering, a Loudonville native and vice president
of General Motors, was closely associated with Flxible for almost
the entire first half of the company's existence. In 1914 Flxible
was incorporated with the help of Kettering, who then became
president of the company and joined the board of directors. Kettering
provided significant funding for the company in its early years,
particularly after 1916 when Kettering sold his firm, the Dayton
Engineering Laboratories Company (Delco), to GM for $2.5 million.
Kettering continued to serve as president of Flxible until he
became chairman of the board in 1940, a position he held until
his death in 1958. After selling Delco to GM in 1916, Kettering
organized and ran a research laboratory at GM, and by the 1950's
held the position of vice president at GM. As a result of Kettering's
close relationship with GM and Flxible, many GM parts were used
in the production of Flxible vehicles, particularly prior to
GM's 1943 purchase of Yellow Coach (a competing bus manufacturer
of which GM had been a majority owner since 1925). For example,
most Flxible ambulances, hearses, and buses from the mid-1920s
to the early-1940s were built on Buick chassis, and Flxible's
"Airway" model buses of the mid-1930s were built on
a Chevrolet chassis.
Charles F. KetteringIn 1958, and as a result of the
consent decree from the 1956 anti-trust case United States v.
General Motors Corp., GM was mandated to sell their bus components,
engines, and transmissions to other manufacturers, free of royalties.
However, in the early 1950's and prior to the consent decree,
Flxible built a small number of buses with GM diesel engines
while Kettering still served on the board. It has been postulated
that GM may have made its diesel engines available to Flxible
to reduce the criticisms of GM's business practices that some
felt were monopolistic[1]. The same has been said about GM's
decision in the 1960s and 1970s not to produce a 35-foot long
"New Look" transit bus with an 8-cylinder engine, however
it is also possible that GM chose not to enter this market because
the potential sales did not warrant the added costs of engineering
and production[2]. Another result of the consent decree (which
was not settled in its entirety until 1965) was that GM was barred
from having any of its officers or directors serve as an officer
or director for any other bus manufacturing company. This provision
would have applied to Kettering had he not passed away in 1958.
In the mid 1980s, several MTA New York City Transit
870 buses developed cracks in their underframes. This prompted
then-president David Gunn to remove the entire fleet out of service.
Soon several other companies reported cracked 870 frames. However,
the frame issues primarily only affected NYCT 870s and not the
870s owned by NYCDOT-franchised carriers. NYCT attempted to get
the remainder of its still-pending order for new buses transferred
to General Motors, but was barred from doing so unless they could
prove that the 870s were flawed and unsafe. The buses were eventually
returned to Flxible and resold to Queen City Metro and New Jersey
Transit. Grumman blamed the problems with the NYCT 870s on NYCT's
maintenance practices despite Chicago's RTA (now PACE), Houston,
and Los Angeles also reporting problems with their 870s. Ironically,
NYCT would order fifty Metros in 1995. However, Flxible would
close their doors while the order was being produced. NYCT would
order the remaining new buses from Orion.
Flxible Owners International was founded in the mid-1980s
as an offshoot of the Family Motor Coach Association, and is
dedicated to the preservation of buses and coaches produced by
Flxible. The organization holds a rally in Loudonville every
even year, normally in mid-July, where many preserved Flxible
coaches and buses may be seen. The majority of vehicles owned
by members are of the Clipper series (Clipper, Visicoach, Starliner)
that were produced from the 1930s until 1967. However, there
are also quite a few "non-clipper" Flxible coaches
that are owned, maintained, and operated by proud Flxible owners.
This includes the Visicoach, VL100 (VistaLiner), Hi Level, and
Flxliner as well as some of the more modern transit buses. Most
of these vehicles have been converted to motorhomes, however
there are still a few examples of seated coaches belonging to
members.
Motorcycle sidecar (1913-early 1920s)
Intercity coach (1924-1932)
Funeral car (1924-1942, 1946-1952, 1959-1964)
Ambulence (1924-1964)
"Airway" intercity coach (1932-1936)
"Clipper" intercity coach (1937-1942, 1944-1950)
Parts for Liberty ships, M4 tanks, F4U Corsair fighter aircraft
and Goodyear "L" type blimps (1942-1945)
"Airporter" intercity coach (1946-1950)
"C-1" intercity coach (1950)
"VisiCoach" intercity coach (1950-1958)
FL "Fageoliner" transit bus (1953-1954)
FT "Flxible Twin" transit bus (1953-1959)
VL-100 "VistaLiner" two-level intercity coach (1954-1959)
"StarLiner" intercity coach (1957-1967)
"Hi-Level" intercity coach (1959-1962)
"Clipper Eagle" intercity coach (1960)
"New Look" bus (1960-1978)
"FlxLiner" intercity coach (1963-1969)
"Flxette" light duty transit bus (1964-1976)
"Flxible" Cruiser Motor Home (1967-1969)
"870 Advanced Design Bus (ADB)" transit bus (1978-1983)
"Metro" transit bus (1983-1995) |
