After 21 years of service, Torrance bus No. 341 retires to the West Coast Motor Coach Museum.

Old buses never die. They just get hauled off to a museum parking lot in La Puente.

After rolling through more than 800,000 miles of service, Torrance Transit Coach No. 341 has earned the right to a peaceful retirement, Torrance City Council members decided Tuesday. Rather than auctioning off the vintage 1964 General Motors bus, the city has agreed to donate it to the West Coast Motor Coach Museum.

Thrilled museum officials, leaders of an 80-member coalition of old-bus aficionados, will arrive some time next week to take Coach No. 341 to its new home.

“It’s never been repainted or refurbished,” museum Vice President Stephen Schwarzwald said. “It appears to us to be a real nice, original coach, a great example of the model.”

The 45-passenger bus was in active service for more than 21 years before it was retired in 1985, Torrance Transit Manager Ray Schmidt said. Driving instructors used the aging coach as a training bus until six months ago.

City officials had expected they would get no more than $400 when they auctioned off the old bus later this year.

When museum officials asked for the bus last May, city officials decided that it might be better to preserve a little bit of transit history than bring in a little bit of cash.

Under the agreement with the museum, Torrance will be allowed to use the bus at any time--including for parades and special displays--for the next five years.

The bus will join a museum collection of 30 other old transit vehicles, which range from a 1943 Twin coach, a precursor to today’s modern Flxible line, to a 1948 Greyhound bus, a sleek “silver-sides” creation introduced as the bus of the future at a World’s Fair.

“We’re just a group of people interested in preserving motor transit history,” Schwarzwald said. “It’s another aspect of overall Los Angeles history that we shouldn’t let disappear.”