David Cassidy Once Caused A Panic By Taking The Famous Partridge Family Bus For A Joyride

In the world of retro television, some vehicles are simply iconic — from the Adam West Batmobile, to KITT from "Knight Rider," to the van from "The A-Team." However, in terms of sheer size and flamboyance, few are quite as eye-catching as the painted school bus used by the eponymous band in the classic 1970s sitcom "The Partridge Family." To put it simply, the bus was an essential (not to mention very expensive) aspect of the show. So it should come as no surprise that a fair amount of panic ensued when late series star David Cassidy, who played Keith Partridge, decided to take it for a joyride in order to get away from what had been a frustrating shoot for the actor.

Cassidy, who died in 2017, recalled the incident in a previously recorded interview (via Pop Goes the Culture TV). Cassidy explained that he and co-star Danny Bonaduce, who played Keith's younger brother Danny Partridge, were filming a scene that put him behind the wheel of the bus. Supposedly, Bonaduce kept blowing his line, which forced Cassidy to keep driving around in circles. Cassidy eventually got fed up and told Bonaduce if it happened again, he was going to drive off the studio lot. It happened again, and sure enough, Cassidy made good on his word.

Fully committing to the bit, Cassidy apparently thought it'd be funny to pick up fast food for the "Partridge Family" crew in the show's iconic bus. Once again, however, the bus was not exactly inconspicuous, and he and Bonaduce attracted a lot of undue attention during their joyride. Worse yet, Cassidy's bosses were not nearly as amused as he was. "They weren't very happy with me," the actor confessed, though he showed little remorse for the stunt.

Of course, the legacy of the bus from "The Partridge Family" goes well beyond the time David Cassidy took it for a joyride and, according to co-star Danny Bonaduce (via Parade), triggered a significant police presence in the process. (For the record, Bonaduce denies he was to blame for Cassidy's actions, though he had fun on their ill-conceived adventure all the same.) As Cassidy himself noted in the aforementioned interview clip that was shared by Pop Goes the Culture TV, "Everybody talks [about it]. Still, to this day. 'God, I love that bus.' It sort of represented freedom, you know, and that freewheeling — the end of the '60s through the '70s ... all of that style." Indeed, much like the show itself, the "Partridge Family" bus has become an enduring cultural touchstone emblematic of the 1970s in its own right.

The vehicle acted as a form of shorthand representing its era with its brief cameo in 1995's "The Brady Bunch Movie" — itself a big-screen revival of another sitcom that premiered in the late 1960s before becoming a staple of the '70s. Elsewhere in the pop-culture sphere, late professional wrestler Mike Awesome drove a painted school bus clearly based on the one in "The Partridge Family" while playing the character of "That '70s Guy" during his time working for Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in the early 2000s. On that note, with so many replicas and recreations of the bus out there, online sleuths have also launched investigations with the goal of finding out what exactly became of the genuine article, which has been lost for years. Unfortunately, its iconic paint job alone apparently isn't enough to pick it out of a crowd anymore.