Blue Bird Wanderlodge

Blue Bird started as a school bus builder in Fort Valley, Georgia. Albert L. Luce Sr., a Ford dealer, finished his first bus in 1927 and formed the Blue Bird Body Company in 1932. He died in 1962, and his three sons, George, Albert Jr. (called Buddy) and Joseph, ran the company. Buddy Luce was its president.

In October 1963 Blue Bird showed a motorhome built on its All American school bus. It was called the Blue Bird Transit Home and was priced at $12,000. A new subsidiary, Cardinal Manufacturing Co., built it. Few buyers came at first, even after the prototype was sent on a long tour of campgrounds. In 1965 House Beautiful magazine ran a story on land yachts that included the coach. Five orders followed, and regular production began that year.

By 1968 the coach had a new name, Wanderlodge, and its price had climbed to $25,000. The Vintage Birds owners’ club model list says it came only as a 31-foot coach with a gasoline engine through 1973, that a 33-foot model was added for 1974 and a 35-foot model for 1975, and that a Caterpillar 3208 diesel arrived in 1977. Wikipedia says the diesel had fully replaced the Ford gasoline engines after 1978. Each coach was built to its buyer’s order, and by the late 1980s the option list ran to about 200 items.

Wikipedia says the Wanderlodge was built like a bus, with a chassis taken from the All American school bus and an all-steel body, and credits that construction for the coach’s name for durability and quality. Blue Bird made the same point decades later: its 2004 brochure described a stainless steel body built as one unit with the chassis and said this gave more structural strength than a fiberglass motorhome.

The club’s list and Wikipedia say rear-engine coaches joined the line for 1982. These PT models had Detroit Diesel two-stroke engines and, Wikipedia adds, a tag axle, and came in 35- and 40-foot lengths. The front-engine coaches were then called FC, for forward control. A 102-inch Wide Body followed for 1988, and a 36-foot single-axle pusher, the SP, for 1989. The last forward-control coaches were 1989 models.

By the late 1980s Blue Bird was selling about 150 to 200 Wanderlodges a year, about a fifth of company sales. Prices started at $199,000, and the top model cost $350,000 before options.

In 1992 Merrill Lynch Capital Partners bought 82 percent of Blue Bird in a buyout led by the company’s managers, who took the rest, and the company passed out of Luce family hands. Wikipedia says the motorhomes had been restyled for 1991 to remove almost every visual link to the school bus, and that the BMC (Blue Bird Motor Coach), added for 1994, was a 37-foot coach on a chassis from Spartan Motors rather than Blue Bird’s own. The club’s list adds a 42-foot Wanderlodge with a Detroit Diesel Series 60 for 1995.

A new generation arrived for 1998; Wikipedia says it was based on Blue Bird’s LTC-40 intercity coach. The club lists the 40-foot LX with a Cummins M11 engine and the 41- and 43-foot LXi with a 500-horsepower Detroit Diesel Series 60. Both sources say slide-out rooms came in during these years and were on every coach by 2002. Henlys Group, a British bus company, bought Blue Bird in 1999. Wikipedia says the 38-foot M380 was added for 2003, and a 2004 brochure shows the top model as the Wanderlodge 450 LXi with a 525-horsepower Caterpillar C13.

After a 2006 bankruptcy filing, Blue Bird came under Cerberus Capital Management and its Traxis Group, and the company decided to build only school buses. In July 2007 it sold its Wanderlodge and Coachworks lines, with the Fort Valley plant that built them, to Complete Coach Works of Riverside, California. Coachbuilt.com says the Wanderlodge rights went to Coachworks Holdings Inc., and Wikipedia says the 450 LXi and M380 stayed in production without the Blue Bird name. Coachworks Holdings stopped building coaches in April 2009 and went bankrupt. Its assets were auctioned in Fort Valley on October 15, 2009, and bus converter Parliament Coach of Clearwater, Florida, bought the company’s intellectual property, including its technical records, and the rights to the Wanderlodge name so that owners would still have support.