1937 Kenworth multi-door bus restoration

Like the White Motor Company, Kenworth picked up some bus business from US National Parks in the 1930s transporting people from their hotels through the wonders of the Parks in the days when not everyone had cars.

This stunningly restored example of one of those Kenworths once transported people from Seattle’s Olympic Hotel and Tacoma’s Winthrop Hotel to Mount Rainier from 1937 to 1962. Mount Rainier National Park is located, like Kenworth, in Washington State.

The multi-door, open-roof, 18-seat design is similar to that of the White Motor Company national parks buses that served in several US national parks from the early 1930s, but obviously, the proximity of the Kenworth factory was an influencing factor in the decision not to give the Mount Rainier National Park bus business to White.

The USA was the first country in the world to inaugurate national parks and the larger ones required some way of moving tourists between the park highlights. Bus tours around the parks were necessary because, back then, most tourists arrived by train.

The parks requested more protected buses and, in a four-way competition with Ford, REO and GMC, held by the National Park Service in 1935 at Yosemite National Park, the White Model 706 chassis emerged as the winner.

Starting in 1936, White produced 500 Model 706s, specifically designed to carry passengers through seven major national parks in western USA.

The distinctive vehicles, with roll-back canvas convertible tops, were the product of noted industrial designer Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky and used bodies from the Bender Body Company of Cleveland. The Seattle-built Kenworth versions were very similar in layout and appearance.

This Kenworth bus is powered by a six-cylinder, Hercules JXD petrol engine, factory rated at 130hp (97kW). The Hercules JX series powered many pre-World War II American trucks and was one of the major power plants in US wartime military vehicles.

The original five-speed, constant-mesh manual transmission is a special-build gearbox that has an unusual shift pattern, because the three lower-speed ratios are crawl gears, to allow gradeability on the steep slopes of Mount Rainier. First is at the far left, opposite reverse and second is an ‘around-the-corner’ shift, with third gear opposite it. Fourth is another around-the-corner shift and fifth is opposite it.

Being a constant-mesh box – no synchromesh back then – with wide ratio gaps, meant that some of the national parks buses were nicknamed ‘Red Jammers’, because of the noise of less skilled drivers ’jamming’ the gear dogs into mesh.

Legacy Classic Trucks of Wyoming is best known for its remanufactured and repowered Dodge Power Wagons and Jeep Wranglers, but is also an accomplished restoration company that put thousands of dollars and many hours of labour into this KW rarity.

Literally every component was disassembled, restored and refitted, including the original wooden floor. However, the original leather upholstery was unserviceable and was replaced by Italian leather, made from 23 hides.

Period correctness extends to specially-made bias-ply tyres, fitted to the bus’s 20x6 Budd disc wheels.

In July 2020 the restored bus was offered for sale by Legacy Classic Trucks, for the princely sum of US$580,000.