Not Just Buses: Greyhound Used These Funky, Open-Air Vehicles to Shuttle People Around
The Drive ·
The Escorter was a futuristic mini taxi built for the 1964 New York World's Fair. The post Not Just Buses: Greyhound Used These Funky, Open-Air Vehicles to Shuttle People Around appeared first on The Drive .
Greyhound did for buses what Pan Am did for air travel, elevating a given mode of transportation to new levels of glamor. The company did that with a meticulously curated image that extended to bespoke vehicles, the most famous of which is the domed Scenicruiser . But we’re not just talking about buses . Greyhound has also dabbled in smaller-scale transportation solutions.
The three-wheeled, open-air Greyhound Escorter was built to shuttle people around the 1964 New York World’s Fair, the showcase of Midcentury Modern design and optimism that also hosted the Ford Mustang’s debut. Described as “new as tomorrow’s newspaper” in period marketing materials , the open-air Escorter was reportedly designed with input from Disney, legendary General Motors design boss Harley Earl’s firm, and Robert Moses, the controversial urban planner who organized the fair.
Moses also oversaw the reshaping of New York’s infrastructure around cars, so it’s not surprising that he favored a car-like form of transportation for World’s Fair visitors. Passengers sat on the bench seat ahead of a driver, who also served as a tour guide. An Escorter could be hired like a taxi (it was even equipped with a meter), or on an hourly or daily basis. Greyhound commissioned the Kalamazoo Manufacturing Company, a Michigan-based company that mostly made railroad equipment, to build 150 Escorters for this purpose.
The Escorter consists of a fiberglass body over a steel frame. An Onan two-cylinder engine powers a hydrostatic drive. The gasoline engine spins a hydraulic pump that pressurizes fluid used to turn motors for each of the front wheels. This probably made operation a bit smoother than a conventional mechanical drive with a gearbox.
Only three working Escorters are thought to survive, and just one is claimed to have been restored to original condition. Also used in the 2015 Disney film Tomorrowland , it was sold at the 2026 Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale auction in January, then resold at another auction this past October for $38,000.
This funky runabout is a rolling embodiment of 1960s futurism, and while many of the futuristic visions from that time didn’t become reality, it did predict the various last-mile mobility alternatives that various companies have proposed. Make it electric and autonomous, and the VC cash will start flowing.
The post Not Just Buses: Greyhound Used These Funky, Open-Air Vehicles to Shuttle People Around appeared first on The Drive .