Founded in 1904, the company was best known for its Supercoach range of yellow school buses and motorcoaches; the former vehicles were marketed throughout the West Coast of the United States.

In March 1991, Crown Coach (then a subsidiary of GE Railcar) ended operations; at the time, the company was struggling against declining demand for school buses.

[2] To increase seating capacity to 79 passenger, Crown introduced a mid-engine Supercoach, using a horizontally-mounted Hall-Scott gasoline engine.

[2] To supplement school bus production, Crown produced intercity motorcoaches (among the first air conditioned designs[1]) and custom-built delivery vans.

[2] Alongside the initial pumper design, Crown developed several configurations of the Firecoach, including water tenders, tiller and ladder trucks, and quints (TeleSquirts).

In the United States during the years immediately following World War II, population growth of suburbs expanded, fueled by the post-war baby boom.

Introduced in 1949, the all-new Supercoach used unit-body construction with high-strength steel in place of a separate chassis; to combat corrosion, all body panels were aluminum.

[2] By lengthening the bodyshell to 40 feet (then the maximum for school buses and motorcoaches) and adding a second rear axle, Crown raised the seating capacity from 79 to 91 passengers.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, school bus production on the West Coast evolved separately from the rest of the United States, with the Crown Supercoach and the similar Gillig Transit Coach holding a near-monopoly of the school bus segment in California and a large share of the rest of the West Coast.

In place of developing such a design from the ground up, both Crown and Gillig chose to serve as the West Coast distributor for other manufacturers.

While sold primarily across the West Coast, examples of the Crown Firecoach were purchased by fire departments across the United States.

In 1979, the Brockway family sold Crown Coach Corporation to a local truck distributor; this began a sequence of ownership changes.

[1] Due to slow sales, Crown ended production of the motorcoach version of the Supercoach in 1980, focusing entirely on school buses.

[1] To diversify production beyond its Supercoach school buses, Crown entered into a joint venture with the Hungarian firm Ikarus in 1980 to market its first mass-transit bus.

In 1983, its Prevost agreement ended, with competitors Wayne, Blue Bird, and Thomas establishing their own West Coast sales networks by the same time;[3] the latter two manufacturers also marketed the competitive All American and Saf-T-Liner buses across the United States.

[2][3] At the end of 1986, Crown Coach entered into receivership; in addition to the closure of production, the Los Angeles factory (which it had owned since 1939) was sold.

Crown Coach was a manufacturer selected to take part of the study, using a methanol-fuel Detroit Diesel 6V92 engine.

[4] In May 1991, the assets of Crown Coach would be purchased by Carpenter Body Works; this included tooling and intellectual property of the company.