JUNK THESE BUSES NOW! New York's Grumman Bus Crisis of 1984 [History of Buses]

A friend of mine had an uncle who worked for Grumman. He said Grumman warned the MTA that they wouldn’t take the beating of the NYC streets without the heavy duty suspension, but they didn’t listen.

I was a former Bus Operator for the LA Metro from 2000-2008. I operated these Flxbles buses and loved them!!!!! They were my favorite!!!!!!!

Grumman did make the LLV for the USPS and those vehicles have had their life span extended by many years beyond what was originally planned.

Funny how they said the buses were crap... but When NJ Transit got em, they fixed the problem and ran em for years. So what happened? Slacker attitude. l lived through this, and wondered about it. Not only that, the private companies still ran theirs, even Long Island bus kept them in service. The TA essentially was full of crap.

NJ Transit ran versions of these well into the 2000s, so clearly they had potential. I do wonder if Grumman spinning Flxible off helped with build quality. As you mentioned in another video recently, defense contractors didn't have the best record when they tried building transit vehicles in the 1970s. Meanwhile I remember as a kid in the '90s thinking NJT's 870s looked like dinosaurs compared to the "futuristic" RTS buses I would see in New York. Only much later did I come to realize they were both 1970s designs.

Here in London, England we had a similar "problem" in the 1970s with a fleet of Daimler Fleetlines which were purchased in bulk by London Transport but due to unreliability, were sold off to other companies who all ended up not finding much in the way of reliability problems and companies like MTL Trust Holdings and China Motor Bus ran these vehicles up into the 1990s and 2000s.

I worked for Grumman Aerospace in Bethpage at the time, and we had a LOT of overtime making repair parts for these buses. Our understanding was when Grumman bought the company, they bought an already designed bus.

Grumman was still HQ'ed in Bethpage, Long Island, NY so got the contract in part due to bias in wanting to support a NYS based company. Part of the chassis/body design that turned out to be flawed was due to trying to make the buses lighter and more fuel efficient. Many streets they were used on were in very poor shape due to a lack of taxpayer funds, a period of severe inflation, flight of people and businesses from the city from the mid-1970's to the early 1980's leading to deferred or never done maintenance done on the streets. Many had severe, badly patched potholes and where utility work was done. I believe most were replaced by the last series of GM buses. By the way, it is interesting to see the ads on the buses of that time with ads for cigarettes, something that became banned in the early 2000's.

In constrast, the Maryland MTA bought GMC RTS buses and hated them. They were retired after 10 years. They bought Grumman 870's/ Flxible Metros and ran them until the wheels fell off.

Thank you so much for this video. It revived memories of the Metro (updated 870) fleet we had in Colorado growing up in the 90s along side the Gillig Phantom and Neoplan AN440. Once they fine tuned it and took care of those issues, they were so beloved and we had nothing but great memories, ours served until late 2005.

This Grumman bus dilemma reminds me of what would happen to Honda everytime they entered or re-entered an open-wheel motorsport(Like F1 or Indycar) Every race car that ran their engines in their first years were lemons, they were unreliable and blew up before the race was over. (Just like Honda's first F1 races in the 60s and 2nd Mclaren era #GP2engine) Its until they master their craft, through team input, trial+error in ~4 years did Honda's engines improve enough to become dominant in their sports- Honda first ~4 years as an engine supplier in CART-Indycar were terrible. Poor Bobby Rahal was losing patience with them! It was until teams like Chip Gannassi were willing to risk running their engines, eventually seeing success together in the late 90s Red Bull F1 is seeing success with Honda after taking a risk in inheriting Mclaren's "Gp2 Engines" Trial+error, and input are what manufacturer needs to improve and I guess NYC MTA only wanted already-perfect buses!

Some Grumman busses were still being used on the bronx westchester bee-line, well into the 1990's

I remember there were many problems with the Grumman busses, only by riding in them. When they pulled them from service Washington, D.C. sent a convoy of their GM buses to us and most of them made the trip. I liked these busses because they had normal padded seats instead of the molded plastic ones we had. They didn’t last too long and we started getting the redesigned GM buses.

I drove Grumman Buses in Phoenix Az I ❤ the way they Handeled😊

Back in the mid-1970s My grandfather was a financial examiner for the state of Ohio and sat on the board of TAGRA, a NW Ohio governmental thinktank. They had advised the regional transit authorities not to buy the Rohr Flxible prototype 870 buses at the time, even though they were built in-state, due to reliability concerns. They also panned the AM General/MAN 220 articulated buses. Undaunted by the report, TARTA bought 29 870s, anyway. I think they ran some articulated buses on loan for a while in the 1980's. If memory serves, several cities in Ohio ran into service and reliability issues with the 870s and pulled them before their expected service life. Currently the vast majority of TARTA buses are Gillig. 175 of the MTA 870s were sold to SORTA in Cincinnati, OH.

This bus was great! NYC got rid of them. New Jersey bought them for a song , fixed them and used them for a long time. Just goes to show you how pathetic NYC is!!!

In Lisbon, Portugal, we had a similar problem with the 1983-1984 Iveco 470.10.20 bodied by Caetano (Carris 3001-3110). The problems ranged from broken wheelwells, defective exhaust system, an engine that didn't handle their routes well, defective steering in some units, defective transmissions, and door malfunctions. Reminding that at the time, Iveco and Fiat were in their doldrums. At some point of their lives, they were more at the shops than on the routes due to those issues. They were taken out of service from 1996 to 2001, less than 20 years after their arrival, and are considered the worst buses purchased by Carris - they were replaced by Volvo B7Ls, B10L CNGs and... cough, Mercedes-Benz Citaro I built in Spain (equally terrible and short-lived), cough.

I remember these early on in Atlanta, I loved riding these, with their futuristic look. We had problems too. Always would see one somewhere broken down…. Man hearing that engine ❤️ and the floating ride effect. Then new flyers buses 🚍 came in💨💨

We had those Flxible 870s here in Louisville Ky up until the 00's when they were slowly phased out by the Gillig Low Floor. I don't think they had any problems. They were the models with the sliding full windows and crossheir looking false grille, and worked beside and outlasted the beautiful RTS and a handfull of Orion 35' busses and a handfull of of a bus that I believe starts with a T, can't remember the name and I just saw one on Pinterest a few days ago. I wouldn't mind having one with the original tail lights. Their windshield makes them unique and they had screaming jimmies in them.

Those Grumman 870s are still better than any Chinese BYD bus. There are members of the historical bus society that own Grumman 870s, and I myself wouldn’t mind getting my hands on one.