I can only be reminded when Detroit ran to LA and sold them on buses and LA dumped their really good streetcar system. Now we ride buses pretending to look like streetcars?

Its going to be interesting watching whats happenning here socially with streetcars and so on, keep watch.

Ah yes, those imitation old-timey streetcars on truck or bus chassis. A friend who owned a series of VW Beetles and was fluent in "Ersatz Deutch" called them Ersatz Strassenvagens. Among other things, the proliferation of these fake trolley cars has led to a conundrum about what to call buses that use overhead electric power (such as those in San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver BC). Nowadays, if you say "trolley bus" many people think of these bogus trams.
As far as Los Angeles is concerned, I was told that the Huntington estate, which owned Los Angeles Ry. until 1945, had developed an investment policy of selling off "operating properties" and placing their funds in the proverbial "gilt-edged securities". As the retired Huntington manager who told me this said, "If it eats or has to be painted, you don't want your money in it." So when a National City Lines entity made an offer for LARy, the estate was a "willing seller" according to this account. What really surprised many observers was when successor company LA Transit Lines bought forty state-of-the-art PCC streetcars in 1948 and assigned them to their heaviest line, the "P" Pico-East First St. service. Whether they knew that buses would have trouble maintaining service on the "P", or they were trying to "buy some respectability" may be lost in the mists of time. One of these 1948 PCC's survives at Orange Empire as "LA's last streetcar."

In my opinion, the best name for such things is "Theme Bus". When people refer to them as trolleys, I cringe and say "oh, you mean a theme bus".

I think those rubber-tired things should be known as "fake trolleys," uttered always with a sneer!

As G.W. so correctly points out, "ALWAYS WITH A SNEER" !!

I can't stand these things, and honestly have never understood the attraction of them. I've taken my personal disdain to the extent that I refuse to ever ride one, even to the point a handful of years ago when I refused to ride one being used for shuttle service between the parking lot and Soldier Field in Chicago (for a Chgo Bears game). I walked the 4 miles in very frosty weather to make a point
(sadly lost on everyone but myself :-) )

Regarding "theme buses", it's gotten to the point where El Reno, Oklahoma has to call its self-propelled streetcar No. 145 (powered by a propane-fueled GM 454 V-8) "The only rail-based trolley in Oklahoma". The carbody started out as Red Arrow "Strafford" car 165, so it has legitimate status as a former electric railway car, although for most of its years it ran between Upper Darby and Norristown (PA) with third-rail power. Its current version is closer to a "doodlebug" than to a trolley car; indeed, quite a few trolley-car bodies wound up with internal-combustion power in the days of yore. (see Interurbans Special 99, the Short Line Doodlebug)

Folks,
i think it was a former Mayer of San Francisco by the name of Christopher that you have to thank for those God awaful "theme cars". He was the last person to cut back the cable car system in 1954. The population got so mad they wrote the cars into the city charter.
The resulting car bodies were put on rubber tires and used by a local tour company at Fisherman's Wharf to run tours around the city as they still do today.
I hate it when one of those awaful things go by in a part of the city that is not served by the real cable cars and a poor toruist who does not know any better says to his family and friends "Look at the Cable Car".
Today the design is used far and wide including a lot of places that never had either street cars or cable cars in the first place or they were not the open closed open style is called a California car. widely used in this state.
The Muni has just added a new car to the fleet; #15 was built from the ground up and it painted yellow for I think the first Market Street Railway of about 1895 or so.
There is also a green #13 which is also fairly new that is painted for the United Railroads of about 1906.
The many city theme from the "F Line" PCC is sort of spilling over onto the Cable Cars excepth that all the color schemes were used here in the city by the Bay where the Calvle Cars still Climb half way to the Sky!

Ted Miles
San Francisco, CA