Flxible

The Flxible Co. (pronounced "flexible") was an American manufacturer of motorcycle sidecars, funeral cars, ambulances, intercity coaches and transit buses, based in the U.S. state of Ohio.

The flexible mounting allowed the sidecar to lean on corners along with the motorcycle, and was based on a design patented by Young.

Charles Kettering, a Loudonville, Ohio native and vice president of General Motors, was closely associated with Flxible for almost the entire first half of the company's existence.

In 1958, as a result of the consent decree from the 1956 anti-trust case, United States v. General Motors Corp.,[2] GM was mandated to sell their bus components, engines, and transmissions to other manufacturers, free of royalties.

However, in the early 1950s and prior to the consent decree, Flxible built a small number of buses with GM diesel engines while Kettering still served on the board.

In the mid-1980s, several Grumman 870 buses operated by the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) developed cracks in their A-shaped underframes.

However, the frame issues primarily affected NYCTA 870s and not the 870s owned by the franchisees of the New York City Department of Transportation, which were the first buses built with the problem rectified the following year.

NYCTA attempted to get the remainder of its pending order for new buses transferred to GM, but was barred from doing so unless they could prove that the 870s were flawed and unsafe.

In the early 1960s, Flxible began licensing a producer in Mexico, DINA S.A. (Diesel Nacional), to manufacture Flxible-designed intercity coaches, and this continued until the late 1980s.

In 1965 and 1966, Flxible also licensed its "New Look" transit bus design to Canadair Ltd., an aircraft manufacturer in Ville St-Laurent, Quebec.

The organization holds a rally in Loudonville biannually, in even-numbered years and normally in mid-July, where many preserved Flxible coaches and buses may be seen.