Ford B series
Motor vehicle platform / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Ford B series is a bus chassis that was manufactured by the Ford Motor Company. Produced across six generations from 1948 to 1998, the B series was a variant of the medium-duty Ford F series. As a cowled-chassis design, the B series was a bare chassis aft of the firewall, intended for bodywork from a second-stage manufacturer. While primarily used for school bus applications in the United States and Canada, the chassis was exported worldwide to manufacturers to construct bus bodies for various uses.
Ford B series | |
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Overview | |
Manufacturer | Ford |
Also called | Mercury MB series (1948–1968) Blue Bird B-Series (Conventional Chassis from Blue Bird) |
Production | 1948–1998 |
Body and chassis | |
Class | Class 6 (medium duty) |
Layout | 4x2 |
Body style(s) |
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Related | Ford F-Series (medium duty) |
Chronology | |
Predecessor | 1941 Ford truck chassis |
Successor | Blue Bird Vision (indirect) |
Prior to 1969, Lincoln-Mercury dealers in Canada marketed the B series as part of the Mercury M-series truck line. At the time, rural Canadian communities were serviced by either a Ford or a Lincoln-Mercury dealer network, but not both networks concurrently.
Coinciding with the late 1996 sale of the Louisville/AeroMax heavy-truck line to Sterling Trucks, Ford phased out the medium-duty F series and the B series following the 1998 model year. For 2000, Ford re-entered the medium-duty segment with the F-650/F-750 Super Duty. As of the 2019 model year, Ford has not developed a cowled-chassis derivative of the F series, instead concentrating on cutaway chassis vehicles. In the cowled-chassis segment, the role and market share of the B series was largely superseded by the Blue Bird Vision (introduced in late 2000's).