Motorhomes are wonderful vehicles for their ability to travel around the country while, as it says right there in the name, bringing home with you. However, they are limited in just how much home they can bring with them. The standard way to add more space to a motorhome, at least while it’s parked, is with the addition of a slide or a few. What you won’t see often is an RV that adds space through height, but that’s exactly what you’re getting with this 1974 Gillig Transit Coach. It started life as a school bus, but now it’s an incredible two-story motorhome.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you’re bored with the factory-built RVs you can buy today, the wonderful world of custom conversions will almost certainly have something for everyone. Sure, you’re not going to get an owner’s manual and replacement parts are entirely on you, but you can get a bus nobody else will have. At the very least, it’s fascinating to see the imaginations of creative builders at work.
Take this Gillig Transit Coach as a prime example. It started life as a humble kid hauler, now it has what’s more or less a cabin on its roof. As a result, it’s a coach where you’ll never complain about having a roof too short!
Behind The Bus
Gillig doesn’t build school buses today, but if you live in even a small American city, there’s a chance you’ve ridden in one of the company’s transit buses. This bus builder is already a part of the Autopian canon, so I’ll let myself hold the microphone:
Gillig’s history dates back to 1890, when the Gillig brothers started a carriage and wagon shop in San Francisco. Jacob Gillig was a carriage builder and upholsterer by trade. His brother, Leo Gillig, was a shop foreman before becoming a business partner. Their shop was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but the brothers rebuilt the shop and added a third Gillig brother, Chester, as a bookkeeper. The rebuilt shop was named the Leo Gillig Automobile Works and in 1914, the Gilligs expanded into a three-story factory. Now, the company would get a fitting name, Gillig Brothers, and the business expanded quickly into car bodies and various commercial vehicles. The company even built a car top that was designed to enclose a convertible in two minutes’ time.
Gillig Brothers diversified its line when the brand released its first school bus in 1932. Since Gillig’s other products weren’t performing well during the Great Depression the company shifted its focus to transit. At the same time, Gillig was also a distributor of Superior Coach professional cars and a builder of ambulance bodies.
Gillig’s first school bus in 1932 was notable for its steel body. That’s common today, but back then it was novel. Superior and Wayne both beat Gillig to an all-steel bus body back in 1930 and 1931 while Blue Bird was experimenting with steel before that. These buses became so popular for Gillig that school buses became the manufacturer’s primary business. Through the 1930s, Gillig expanded, bought out its main competitor, Patchett and Carstensen, and expanded even further.
Gillig’s next development would come in 1940 in the form of the brand’s first transit-style school bus. Once again, Gillig was not the first to market with this style of school bus. Crown Coach Corporation beat Gillig to the punch by eight years. However, Gillig did beat the famed Blue Bird, which didn’t introduce a transit-style school bus until 1948. Sometimes, Blue Bird is sometimes attributed as creating America’s first transit-style school bus, but it was a little late.
Those first Gillig transit-style school buses featured a mid-mounted Hall-Scott gasoline engine, which was turned on its side. By the 1950s, these Hall-Scotts were rather massive, featuring up to 590 cubic inches of displacement and six cylinders. Output? Around 1950, you were looking at 245 horsepower.
While Gillig was not the first to make a transit-style bus, it does claim to be the first to create a rear-engine diesel-powered bus. That bus was the 1959 Model C-180, which featured a Cummins C-180 straight-six supercharged diesel engine. Other developments in Gillig buses came from new roof caps and rear intakes, traits taken from Kenworth’s Pacific bus after Gillig purchased the company in 1957.
Going into the 1960s, Gillig continued rear-engine diesel school bus development and by the mid-1960s, the company had grown to such a size that reportedly, most school buses sold in Northern California and Washington were Gilligs. The manufacturer even produced buses so large they were 41 feet long with 16 rows of seats, a tandem axle in the rear, and a 97-passenger capacity.
This Bus
When this bus was made in 1974, the big Gillig news was the introduction of a fiberglass dashboard with a simplified control layout. It started life as a school bus, then fell into private hands after its retirement.
The seller, Izaac Zonka, tells me that the story of this particular build began about five years ago. Zonka and his friend wondered just how far they could go with a bus build. This bus started off as a complete bus build before Zonka and his friend decided to chop off the roof. Then, they added the cabin to the top, creating a distinctive two-story rig.
Due to the tall roof raise, the lower floor can be used to house a kitchen, living room, and bathroom of decent size. The upper portion of the bus provides extra headroom and more of an airy feel, but also bedrooms fore and aft. The result is a surprising amount of space for a school bus build. There was enough space, even, that Zonka fit the bus with residential appliances and there’s still plenty of space to stretch out. Features include, from the listing:
Vaulted ceilings
Composting toilet
On demand hot water heater
Insulated
Bath tub/shower
Propane stove
Full size fridge
2 bedrooms
New tires
New batteries
New starter
Washer
Comes with wood stove
Zonka estimates that with the roof raise, you’re getting somewhere around 730 square feet, which is pretty nice. Power comes from an 855 cubic inch Cummins inline-six. This is making about 250 HP and about 686 lb-ft of torque. This engine is said to have been rebuilt 40,000 miles ago and it’s connected to a manual transmission.
The seller says the bus was used as an Airbnb. Now, it’s time to pass the motorhome on. Sadly, the seller was not able to provide higher-resolution photos, but you can mostly see what’s going on. It’s not a luxurious build, but definitely, one that would be fun to park someplace to just enjoy the view and natural light. I also love how the roof is so tall there’s enough room to place a chandelier.
If you want to take an adventure in this tallboy school bus conversion, the seller wants $40,000 for it. You’d start your journey in Spokane, Washington, so you can get plenty of scenic camping immediately after you buy it. Just be sure to watch out for low bridges.
I wonder how not waterproof this is.
Even accessing campgrounds would be tough in this thing, since they don’t tend to prune the tree canopy over the roads.
It’s a novelty, which isn’t as mobile as it looks. Map your routes carefully!
I am not that knowledgeable about RVs. But in the interest of saving water have they ever filtered the Grey water for flushing in order to get more use out of the clean water?
I’ve never heard of it being integrated into the plumbing, but catching dish and shower water and dumping them in the toilet is a pretty common way to stretch tank capacities when dry camping.
“Just be sure to watch out for low bridges”
And the siren call of 11’8.
In LA if it has wheels it can be any type of living structure. People have converted horse trailers and other odd vehicles. This is perfect for an unpermited guest house in LA. Just have to get onto the property.
Nice! Yeah, and there’s already low bridges in Spokane that keep getting hit
What’s the height on this thing?
Google says a generic school bus is 10-11ft tall, and the raising of the roof on this looks to be ~4-5ft, so this thing is likely over height.
Forget 11’8″+8″, this thing has to worry about every bridge.
I would lose the upper half and just sleep on the couch.
As soon as you tried to drive it anywhere you’d get your wish.
A real sized cow water tub and a shitter that isn’t a cassette. I’m in. Has anyone ever considered just how gross the words “cassette toilet” sound? Gross, so you stick this cassette you just pooped in into the kraco stereo you just got from Kmart from your lawn mowing savings in the dashboard of your hand me down car and your poo just magically disappears after you crapped in the magic cassette?
Cue the recent video of the semi getting it’s trailer roof shredded by the overpass……
But I don’t want to be a pirate.
I got called a butt pirate once. Don’t miss the days of being bullied at school one bit!
ok, all through high.school. I’m OK now. A trillion $s of therapy works wonders
Col Lingus. Oh my gawd! I just now got the humor of your handle. 10/4 good buddy. I still remember cb’s
I hate to admit it but also remember CB radios.
But not sure how it relates to the handle?
Sometimes I did not pay much attention in school, or other important life skills.
But it’s been a fun ride.
Hey, this pirate trend is gonna be the new look for the ’20s
It looks like someone stuck a coffin on top of a bus….
Dude a wood shack on top of a bus looks like some cartoon bullshit come to life.
Definitely a Beverly Hillbillies vibe going on. The farm trough bathtub doesn’t help/hurt either.
the low-ass bridge is licking its chops
I wonder how that thing is going down the road, especially as top heavy as it is. But then, with 686 ft-lbs of torque, it probably isn’t doing it fast
you’re implying that 686 ftlbs is a small number, and that torque influences top speed.
That thing is pushing 25000 lbs at least, and yes, torque has alot to do with speed at that weight. My truck has 1800 lf-lbs, and weighs 33000 with an empty trailer. I still loose speed on steep grades and in headwinds. That thing probably can’t overcome wind resistance above 50
So, when deciding top speed on level ground, the only numbers that matter are horsepower(rate at which the engine can add kinetic energy to the bus) and drag(rate at which the wind and tires are removing kinetic energy from the bus). Weight affects inertia and potential energy, which matter a lot during acceleration and hill climbing, but does not affect top speed.
At any given speed, engine RPM, and throttle position, if drag removes energy faster than the engine can add it, the bus will slow down. If the engine adds energy faster than drag takes it away, the bus will speed up.
If the engine is at wide open throttle and at peak horsepower RPM, it will produce 250hp, which is a lot. For reference, those Toyota motorhomes that have like an 80hp 22re have a top speed of 65mph or more. I have personally piloted a 220hp 3208-powered ten wheeler spud truck to more than 50mph, and my uncle says that he has gotten one of those to almost 80mph out on the interstate.
This thing will be horribly slow on on-ramps and hills, but I bet its top speed is at least 60.
In many ways, torque doesn’t matter, because a 49cc moped will produce the same 1800lbft as your 15L semi truck engine if it’s geared down low enough. Obviously it won’t do it very fast, and torque at speed is important. Torque times speed is exactly what horsepower is, and that’s why horsepower is important.
You are completely right. But in the real world, no roads are perfectly straight and flat, and as you go up in gears, you loose your torque multiplication. That engine has a 600 rpm power band, so to stay in that power band ya gotta shift. Even then, wind resistance is a thing. I drive a 389 Pete, the long nose old school one. My aero is so bad, I run out of power and have to drop gears in a headwind, which limits my top speed. And I have 525hp, 1850 ft-lbs, a 13 speed transmission, and 3.25 rear ends. That bus may have lower rears, but that is it.
In the real world, most interstates are pretty close to perfectly straight and flat, and many are actually perfectly straight and flat for large sections. At least out West where I’m used to driving.
Like I said, its maximum cruising speed will be fine, the main issue is on hills and accelerating. It will be slow, but not slower than any other bus or coach from 1974, because that is a totally normal amount of horsepower.
The reason you have to downshift so much is because of those tall gears. Which is what you want for a high horsepower highway truck.
This bus definitely has shorter gears, and it probably stays in top gear almost all the time.
I see now where we are getting crossways. In perspective of 1974, ya this will do fine. I was looking at it from a modern perspective. Mine is a 22 model truck, designed to go fast. In theory, mine is a triple digit truck. But yes, that bus could do 60. But I’m used to texas and oklahoma interstates. Windy,curvy and no effort in flattening them out. Plus I drive mountains in Arizona, where that thing would die. So from my perspective, it would be slow. And I have started looking at torque figures as the indicator to how much a vehicle can pull, instead of horses, when diesel 3/4 ton pickups started pulling higher hp figures than my semi.
Well, the perspective of 1974-90s at least, because that’s about the standard horsepower in buses for long after 1974. I mean, they were putting 180hp IDIs and Cummins 5.9s in school buses in the 90s.
Torque and horsepower and pulling capability are really interesting. Torque mainly reflects at which engine speed an engine makes its horsepower. A 500hp Lamborghini really could pull as much as a 500hp semi…….. the difference being the Lamborghini would be at about 8000rpm and the semi would be at about 2000rpm. Obviously one is more efficient and massively more long lived in this service.
But a 500hp 1200lbft high output 6.7 Powerstroke wouldn’t be running more than 3000rpm to do the same thing a 15L 500hp 1800lbft engine does. Obviously it would be under a LOT more boost, but it probably would actually last a while pulling 80k. Diesel pickups are totally insane, and this kind of shows how much manufacturers are really capable of when not stifled by CAFE and less stifled by emissions than light cars are.
True. Hell, Cummins has a 12l pushing 500hp 1600ftlbs. It’s amazing how much power these new engines put out. But CAFE still guts these engines. I’ve heard if you pull the emissions off of my 15l, it will jump power immensely. I’ve seen a deleted one pulling up a 6 percent grade at 75mph at 80k. But damn if I’m gonna pull the emissions off this truck. Have you seen those fines? And it is $25k just to re install it!
But as for that bus, ya, it may cruise fine, but other than cruising, it would be slow. And corner really slow, cause it is top heavy. And keep it away from wind. Lol. I guess I’m spoiled by the ability to get up and go. If I tried to drive the old grain truck back on the farm, I’d probably be pulling my hair out.
You clearly have never been to West Virginia. Where no highways are flat NOR are they straight. 🙂
Yeah there are interstates in Tennessee where this bus might topple over
burn
I wonder if this idea would work better as a pop up?