Gray Line Tours : Starline Buys Major Rival in Southland

Starline Sightseeing Tours on Monday drove away with its major competitor by buying the Los Angeles, Orange County and Santa Barbara operations of Gray Line Tours.

The Hollywood-based bus charter and tour company said the purchase of the Gray Line operations will double the size of the company’s bus fleet and allow it to reduce costs. Gray Line also has a strong presence in Orange County, where Starline had wanted to beef up its business. Gray Line was purchased from the Avis car rental company for an undisclosed price.

Vahid Sapir, who with his brother, Fred, own Starline, said they will keep the Gray Line name alive. “Gray Line has a good name,” Sapir said. “We are going to merge the tours and keep the names the same.”

Sapir does not expect to lay off any employees as a result of the merger, which took place Monday.

The combined tour bus company will have a fleet of about 150 buses and carry about 2.5 million passenger a year, Sapir said. Besides tours of the stars’ homes, which include former President Ronald Reagan’s Bel-Air home, the companies provide charter service and transport guests from 300 area hotels on scheduled trips to tourists attractions such as Disneyland and Universal Studios.

Sapir and his brother started the company about 20 years ago when they bought a fleet of Cadillac limousines used to transport guests of Sid Grauman, builder of Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. The bus company’s headquarters are at what is now Mann’s Chinese Theater.

In 1986, a Starline charter bus returning to Los Angeles from Reno crashed in Mono County, Calif., killing 21 people in one of the nation’s deadliest bus accidents. The company paid $5 million to settle claims stemming from the accident.