The words Bus and Bor­ing share more than just their ini­tial let­ter but that hasn’t stopped an assort­ment of vision­ary artists from jazz­ing up this most util­i­tar­ian form of trans­port. These 15 exam­ples epit­o­mize the height of slick tran­sit glorious!

C’Mon, Get Hippy!

(images via: David Icke, Buses On Screen and Career Cap­i­tal­ist)

Bub­ble gum on a bus? Sure thing — and not just stuck under the seats. One of the most endur­ing 4-wheeled sym­bols of TV pop cul­ture hit the road in 1970 when The Par­tridge Fam­ily painted an old school bus in psy­che­delic Mon­dri­anesque graph­ics and hit the road to faux-musical stardom.

(image via: TV Sinopse)

The series was revived in Par­tridge Fam­ily 2200AD, an ani­mated car­toon ver­sion that, while sup­pos­edly tak­ing place 200 years in the future, still man­aged a clas­sic 1970s aes­thetic right down to Lau­rie Partridge’s bell-bottoms. The Par­tridge Fam­ily bus also got a rad­i­cal makeover, as seen above.

Cat­Bus Cooler

(images via: GilNet­work and Amaz­ing Facts)

First seen in the Miyazaki ani­mated film My Neigh­bor Tor­toro, the Cat­Bus moved on to big­ger and bet­ter things… like Burn­ing Man 2002. Stranger things have been spied upon the Playa but few have been more strik­ing. It’s too bad every school bus didn’t look like the Cat Bus… gen­er­a­tions of stu­dents would have arrived at school in a much bet­ter frame of mind.

Pimp My Bus

(images via: Guzer and More Cool Pic­tures)

Stu­dents at Eng­land’s Ellesmere Port Spe­cial­ist School of Per­form­ing Arts don’t mind rid­ing the short bus, and nei­ther would you — if it was a low-riding, pimped out Caddy SUV bus! Info on the pimped-out bus is few and far between but it seems to be an actual bus that has received a Cadil­lac Escalade front-end con­ver­sion with air suspension.

The REALLY Short Bus

(images via: Oob­ject and Tree­hug­ger)

Didn’t make it into that swanky British per­form­ing arts school? Pity — instead of a cool Caddy you might be stuck rid­ing the Tri­cy­cle Bus instead. This short­est of short buses brings kids to an Indian pub­lic school much the same way farm­ers bring their live­stock to mar­ket. At least the kids aren’t des­tined for the stew pot… one hopes. Study hard, kid­dies, study VERY hard!

School In A Bus

(image via: Hard­ware Zone)

At the oppo­site end of the scale is this rolling com­put­er­ized school bus spon­sored by Microsoft and enjoyed by stu­dents in China. You’d bet­ter believe the kids rid­ing on this bus will be excep­tion­ally well behaved and won’t even think of toss­ing an action fig­ure attached to a very long string out the win­dow. Geez!

Sharp Dressed Bus

(images via: KJLyons, We Love Scotch and Art Car)

The Amer­i­can Vision­ary Art Museum in Bal­ti­more is weird enough on its own but the bus parked right out­side adds just the right amount of wacky. The bus is cov­ered in pieces of bro­ken mir­ror, then dec­o­rated with assorted bird and ani­mal fig­urines because, well, why not? For­get that Caddy SUV bus, if I’m going to art school THIS is the ride of choice!

Panama Hat Tricks

(image via: The Panama News)

Panama has a long tra­di­tion of paint­ing city buses as elab­o­rately as the owner desires. Sadly, this blast of local color may be com­ing to an end — author­i­ties pre­fer that all buses be painted in stan­dard color schemes to match their route. On the bright side, do you really want to ride a bus that fea­tures The Under­taker on its rear emer­gency door?

Get­ting The Bends

(image via: A H Boon)

Adver­tis­ers just love buses; prob­a­bly has some­thing to do with huge, double-sided flat spaces that move through crowded urban areas on a reg­u­lar basis. Since jaded city-types tend to tune out ordi­nary ads after a while, some­thing strik­ing is needed to drive home the mes­sage. In the images above, mar­keters take advan­tage of artic­u­lat­ing buses and slid­ing entry/exit doors by incor­po­rat­ing their func­tions into eye-opening guer­rilla adver­tis­ing.

The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round

(image via: A H Boon)

Even big bus wheels are fair game — inte­grat­ing a wheel or wheels into an ad also expands the area which can be used as ad space. Above are sev­eral choice exam­ples that wheelie grab one’s attention.

Topsy-Turvy Bus Busts Budget

(images via: Gear­fuse and Habeeb)

The Topsy-Turvy Bus was built by artist Tom Kennedy and com­mis­sioned by Ben & Jerry’s ice cream co-founder Ben Cohen work­ing through BLSP, an acronym for “Busi­ness Lead­ers for Sen­si­ble Pri­or­i­ties.” The mes­sage being spread is that the U.S. bud­get is out of whack in a big way, to the extent that the gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ties are upside down.

Fast & Ball Bus

(images via: Just A Car Guy and Dark Roasted Blend)

Lars-Erik Fisk is a sculp­tor who turns things into balls. Trees, roads, barns and VW microbuses have all under­gone the Fisk treat­ment, much to the awe & amuse­ment of all who’ve viewed them. When not rolling up the world around him, Fisk is the Art Direc­tor for the rock band Phish.

Sky High School Bus

(images via: TBirds and Hacked Gad­gets)

The good news? You’re rid­ing on the coolest bus in your — or any — town. The bad news? On the jet bus, you’ll never be late for school again. That’s what hap­pens when you yank a few rows of seats from a vin­tage school bus and stuff a West­ing­house J-34 tur­bo­jet engine through the rear doors. Ed Rooney approves… NOT!

World’s Ugli­est School Bus

(image via: Odd­ity Cen­tral)

What do you call a hybrid of a truck and a bus? Per­haps this unnat­ural and ill-advised vehi­cle could be called a Truss; it’s that ugly. Stu­dents sit in the trailer por­tion much like cat­tle on their way to the slaugh­ter­house — on test days I’m sure they can sym­pa­thize. Only the bus dri­ver gets some ben­e­fit from the con­fig­u­ra­tion as he/she is iso­lated from the lit­tle mon­sters’ scream­ing, fight­ing and lunch toss­ing. It’s going to be very popular.

(image via: Cool Cars & Girls)

Now here’s the RIGHT way to build a truck-bus combo.

Bus Da Move

(images via: Ridelust and Nuffy)

The sides of the Short­cut High bus are embla­zoned “Wanna be cool? Stay in school?”, and if all school buses were like this one, then it’s mis­sion accom­plished! Loosely based on a fab­u­lous ‘49 Ford truck, this boss bus was the “prin­ci­pal” attrac­tion at the 2002 SEMA show.

(image via: Michi­gan Bus Parts)

Here’s another view of this awe­some gangsta bus that brings stylin’ to hypermilin’.

Stop The Bus!

(images via: Trend Land and Impact Lab)

Our final entry is not a bus — it WAS a bus. Three buses actu­ally, who together have found new life as a bus stop in Athens, GA, home of The B-52s. Strange as it may look, the odd­est thing about this bus stop is the fact that the City of Athens felt the need to set up a Bus Stop sign at the bus stop made of buses.

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