A 1960’s Blue Bird All American situated next to a 1960’s Carpenter conventional style School Bus. Both are sitting in pasture and being used exclusively for parts storage.
Sadly, many junkyards buy retired School Buses to use strictly for parts storage. These vintage School Buses could instead be lovingly restored.
A 1934 model year Wayne conventional style School Bus on a GM chassis & cowl.
Again, I would have this bus restored in a heartbeat as I prefer only vehicles in original or restored, like-new condition.
Historically, ABC had covered NASCAR only as a scaled-down and highly edited segment of Wide World Of Sports; because nobody thought that the entire nation would give a hoot about NASCAR.
Bill France Sr. was unhappy about ABC having aired his races strictly as scaled-down segments on Wide World Of Sports, and he wanted a television network to televise Flag-To-Flag coverage of his races. So CBS had promised to televise a couple races Flag-To-Flag, the 1979 Daytona 500 was helped in viewership by a major snowstorm that had occurred on the Eastern Seaboard; and the rest, they say, is history with regards to CBS’s legendary NASCAR coverage.
Roone Arledge, by this time during the years 1978-1979, having assumed the duties of being the head of both ABC’s news & sports departments; had pondered over giving ABC the chance to televise a NASCAR race Flag-To-Flag, and attempting to outbid CBS for the television rights to the Daytona 500. But once Roone Arledge had also become the head of ABC’s news department, the sports department was on his back burner; and he had pretty much left the sports department in the hands of the Vice President of ABC Sports, the person who is second-in-line of management. Because of this, Roone had wished that he had moved the sports department into the same building where the news department was based at the time so that he could have kept a closer eye on the sports department, and maybe, perhaps; outbidded CBS for the television rights to the Daytona 500.
But, it was meant to be in it’s entirety that CBS had their television rights to NASCAR for the next 21 years until 2000, and CBS had done a better job of televising a NASCAR race than ABC ever did. CBS had even won an Emmy for their telecast of the 1989 Daytona 500.
In 1984, the independent ABC, just before both the television network and the cable channel were about to be acquired by Capital Cities Communications; had purchased ESPN.
Any Flag-To-Flag coverage of a NASCAR race that ABC had aired ever since they had acquired ESPN was likely produced wholly by ESPN and aired on ABC in lieu of the cable channel, per the conditions of the contract for the television rights. Ever since the 1972 Greenville 200, ABC had never fully produced a single NASCAR race with Flag-To-Flag coverage, it was always done wholly by ESPN by the time Flag-To-Flag coverage of a NASCAR race had come along.
Video of the 1987 Motorcraft 500 at Atlanta International Speedway that had aired on ABC:
Videos of former WXYZ-TV anchor Solon Gray, who had worked at WXYZ-TV during their breakthrough coverage of the 1967 Detroit riots that had earned WXYZ-TV respect among the viewing public and in the broadcasting industry as a whole; when he had later worked at KIRO-TV in Seattle, then at WSVN-TV at Miami, and even later at WTVJ-TV in Miami.
Video of Solon Gray reporting next to a Ford C-Series Medium-Duty truck while working at KIRO-TV:
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Episode of the CBS News program 48 Hours from January, 1989 about a scenario that takes place in Detroit.
This was during a better time of CBS news (albeit the corporate takeovers and cutbacks in the news department) when compared to now, and a better time for CBS overall.
This was also a better time for CBS Sports as well. Neal Pilson was still at the helm of CBS Sports as of this time.
The ex-Storer stations (having been acceded to KKR in a hostile takeover just a few years earlier in 1986) were still CBS affiliates as of this time.
This is how CBS News remains forevermore in “Early Life And Continuous Livelihood”.
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I never knew that Studebaker ever made a Medium-Duty School Bus chassis & cowl.
I knew they had a commercial and military vehicle division that had produced the ZipVan for the U.S Postal Service and the M38 truck.
Photos of vintage School Buses on a Studebaker chassis & cowl:
A 1940’s Blue Bird conventional style Scool Bus on a Studebaker chassis & cowl. I would have this bus restored immediately, as I loathe the rat-rod look, and prefer vehicles in original, like-new condition.
A 1950 Studebaker conventional style School Bus on a Studebaker chassis & cowl:
A 1948 Superior conventional style School Bus on a Studebaker chassis & cowl:
Champion, today two separate companies that build manufactured homes and commercial buses; was at one time, a singular company based in Dryden, Michigan that built the latter two in addition to motorhomes, and during the late 1950’s-early 1960’s-conventional Travel Trailers.
Champion started out in 1953 building manufactured homes, then had expanded into RVs with the conventional Travel Trailer and then motor homes; and the company had leveraged it’s experience on building motorhomes on a commercially available chassis by entering the commercial bus business.
In the late 1980’s, the RV/commercial bus business and the manufactured housing business were split off into two separate companies bearing the same name; and by the early 1990’s, the RV/commercial bus business-now owned by Thor Industries, owner of several other RV manufacturers (including Airstream); got Champion out of the RV business and made commercial buses the company’s core business, which is still the case to this day. Thor Industries, after all; had nothing to lose since they own a plethora of other RV manufacturers.
At some point in time, Champion had moved out of their tiny offices and manufacturing facility in Dryden, Michigan and into a larger facility in Imlay City, Michigan.
Today, Champion’s bus manufacturing facility is based in Rose City, Michigan.
Champion’s facilities in Dryden, Michigan:
Champion’s facilities in Imlay City, Michigan:
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An autograph from Darrell Waltrip for a man in Texas from the late 1970’s-early 1980’s, when he drove the #88 Mountain Dew sponsored Chevrolet for DiGard Motorsports during the good, old days of NASCAR.
Pictures of the Denim Blue interior that I order in the 1999 Ford Super Duty F-350 in the book that I wrote about if I was born at an earlier time.
A B3 Passat wagon (one of my favorite generations of Passat, alongside the B2) in Finnmark, Norway-located in the northernmost section of the country near the northern Finnish and Russian borders.
Another view of this B3 Passat Wagon:
Matthew Parij 