Starting in 1996, all Carpenter buses were sold under the brand "Crown by Carpenter". In 1996, Carpenter contracted Spartan Motors to build its RE and FE chassis in Charlotte, MI and moved its body building operations from its aging Mitchell facility to Richmond. During this transition, Carpenter revised the body design of all of its buses. The changes included a new roof design with single-piece roof bows and revised rubrails (full-length upper rubrails). The Wayne Lifeguard would donate some of its parts to the Crown Classic, including its windshield, entry door, and driver's switch panel. Crown By Carpenter sold a lineup of two Type A buses (Classmate SW/DW), one Type B bus (the Cadet), one Type C bus (the Classic), and two Type D buses (FE/RE, dropping the Counselor name). At the new location, Carpenter had the advantage of an established team. Both the leadership and workforce based at Richmond included a number of veterans of the former Wayne operations. As such, they brought considerable experience and knowledge of the plant and industry to the effort. In adapting to the equipment at the Richmond plant, a change to the techniques of welding the roof joints from the procedures used before at Mitchell would later prove vital in excluding Crown by Carpenter products from containing a crucial structural flaw. That situation was not envisioned by anyone then and would only become an issue nearly a decade in the future. One innovation that Carpenter introduced during this period was a change to the design of its "Crown RE", mounted on a Spartan Motors chassis. The Crown RE was the first rear-engine school bus to feature an option of a conventional rear emergency door instead of an emergency exit window typical on rear-engine school buses. To make this possible, the floor was slanted up in the last few rows in order to gain height over the engine compartment. Crown by Carpenter also produced a delivery truck loosely derived from its "Cadet" Type B school bus line. Carpenter (2000–01) In 1998, Carpenter was sold to Spartan Motors, a Michigan-based manufacturer of chassis for fire apparatus and high-end recreational vehicles. Nevertheless, major outside forces still to be faced were a supply of suitable chassis and the overcapacity of the body industry. After four years, Carpenter had decided to phase out the Crown name in favor of a return to just Carpenter. In a decision to