[vdo]

I agree, sorry to be tangential, but school buses even have a whole community around converting them into rvs/homes, skoolies. The advice thrown around most often within this community trends toward picking diesel over gas, because diesel ones are very reliable when maintained. I always read it's better to get a pre-2004 diesel bus, because they have simpler, more mechanical parts. Diesel engines are really hyped among skoolie enthusiasts, though of course that is not to say that in e.g. fb groups, you don't hear horror stories of people stranded with a broke-down rig, it's usually lack of maintenance though. When maintained, they do last well past when school districts retire them--maybe survivorship bias, the ones that lasted to the end were more likely to keep lasting. My boyfriend has one such bus that was made the same year he was born (1989) and it took us on a 10-state roadtrip and was our home for over a year.