GM "old-look" transit bus
GM bus manufactured from 1940 to 1969
The GM "old-look" transit bus was a transit bus that was introduced in 1940 by Yellow Coach beginning with the production of the model TG-3201 bus. Yellow Coach was an early bus builder that was partially owned by General Motors (GM) before being purchased outright in 1943 and folded into the GM Truck Division to form the GM Truck & Coach Division. The Yellow Coach badge gave way to the GM nameplate in 1944. Production of most "old-look" models was stopped upon the release of the GM New-Look bus in 1959, however some smaller "old-look" models continued to be built until 1969. Approximately 38,000 "old-look" buses were built during the 29-year production run. The "old-look" name is an unofficial retronym applied to this series of GM buses after the release of the GM New-Look series.
Design
The GM "old-look" bus was somewhat streamlined in appearance (resembling the PCC streetcar in styling), similar in shape to a loaf of sandwich bread, and had windows that were smaller than those found on more modern bus designs produced after the 1950s. Unlike most earlier buses, the GM "old-look" bus was built using a monocoque design, rather than a body-on-frame design, and it helped shepherd the change from gasoline to diesel-powered buses. Most "old-look" buses were powered with the Detroit Diesel 6-71 inline six-cylinder diesel engine, the exceptions being the shorter models that were powered by the Detroit Diesel 4-71, a four-cylinder version of the same diesel engine, and buses that were equipped with gasoline engines.
Manual and automatic transmissions were available.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “GM "old-look" transit bus” is gM bus manufactured from 1940 to 1969. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through old-look, transit and manufactured, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5513810. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1940, 1943, 1944 and 1959.
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