Liberty Coach founder celebrates 80th birthday
Today marks the 80th birthday of Liberty Coach founder and President Frank Konigseder Sr. It seems like an appropriate time to devote some space to the man who started it all and reflect on his many accomplishments. First, some background:
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Before The Bus
EDITOR’S NOTE: While Liberty Coach was incorporated in 1972, the company’s history began years earlier with the travels of Frank (Sr.) and Jeanne Konigseder. The following account is the first in a series of posts excerpted from Jeanne’s unpublished memoir
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Labor of Love: Liberty Coach #1
EDITOR’S NOTE: While Liberty Coach was incorporated in 1972, the company’s history began years earlier with the travels of Frank (Sr.) and Jeanne Konigseder. The following account is the second in a series excerpted from Jeanne’s unpublished memoir chronicling the
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Showtime!
EDITOR’S NOTE: While Liberty Coach was incorporated in 1972, the company’s first coach was completed months earlier in the fall of 1971. The following account of the travels and sale of Liberty Coach #1 is the third in a series
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The Scenicruiser Story
EDITOR’S NOTE: In the 1970s, Liberty built its coaches on used passenger buses purchased from Greyhound Bus Lines in Chicago. This excerpt from Jeanne Konigseder’s unpublished memoir, the fourth in a series, offers an in-depth look at one of the
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The Little Engine That Couldn’t
EDITOR’S NOTE: Another bus Liberty converted in the pre-Prevost era was the MC-5, the first American-made bus from Motor Coach Industries (MCI). This excerpt from Jeanne Konigseder’s unpublished memoir details some of the challenges the family encountered with this particular
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Liberty at 50: Family Reflections
In January, Liberty Coach threw a party – the Golden Anniversary Liberty Coach Rally & Open House – at their Florida dealership to commemorate the company’s 50th anniversary year in business. During the rally, longtime friend of Liberty and RV
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The Start of Something Big
EDITOR’S NOTE: Liberty’s days as a used-coach “show and sell” convertor came to an abrupt end in 1978 with the now-legendary meeting between Frank Sr. and the owners of Prevost Car. Jeanne Konigseder recalls the encounter and its aftermath in
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Name That Coach!
EDITOR’S NOTE: The arrival of the Prevost era signaled the beginning of the end of Liberty’s “one-coach-at-a-time” approach to production. Reprinted here is the story of the company’s first standardized floorplan, the Fort Myers Edition, excerpted from the September 1981
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“The Perfect Marriage: Liberty and Prevost”
How significant has the decades-long relationship between these two companies been? In this “Liberty Minute” video clip, Steve Zeigler, Director of Prevost’s Bus Shell Division, reflects on his company’s historic partnership with Liberty Coach and the industry it helped create.
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The FMCA and Liberty Coach: A 50-Year Family Friendship
No chronicle of Liberty’s Coach’s history would be complete without a shoutout to the FMCA – short for the Family Motor Coaching Association. Since 1963, it has been one of the largest and most influential organizations of RV owners across
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1982-2000: The Dealership Era
EDITOR’S NOTE: As coach production ramped up and demand continued to grow, Liberty began to supplement its direct-to-the-customer sales model with a series of independent dealers. In this post, Frank Konigseder Jr. traces the history of Liberty’s involvement with selected
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First Lady
EDITOR’S NOTE: In 1990, some 20 years after Frank and Jeanne Konigseder began work on their first bus conversion, they unveiled a new coach design that would prove iconic and define the company for years to come: the Liberty Lady.
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Back to the Future? Take the Liberty Tour, circa 2003
One of the really fun aspects of working on our yearlong 50th anniversary celebration is occasionally stumbling upon some long forgotten piece of Liberty history – a picture or newspaper clipping or personal memento – that triggers memories of a
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The Stuart Story
EDITOR’S NOTE: By the spring of 2001, it had become apparent that Buddy Gregg was planning to close his Lakeland facility, which would leave Liberty without a presence in Florida. In this post, Frank Konigsder Jr. offers his account of
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Sliding Ahead
EDITOR’S NOTE: For all the “firsts” Liberty brought to the Prevost conversion industry over the decades, the introduction of slideout wasn’t one of them – and for good reason. Read more in this post on the dawn of the slide
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