I had the chance to eat lunch with Bob Wheeler, CEO of Airstream, Inc., the other day. I can't say I know a lot about the RV industry, but I grew up with a dad who always had some kind of camper, trailer, or motorhome around the house. And when he got closer to retirement, he got himself a Class A widebody and traveled through most of the western part of the country. I've even rented a few Fleetwood Class A motorhomes a few times, but never had the chance to pull one of the icons of the industry -- an Airstream trailer.
Is there anyone who doesn't think these trailers are the coolest things you can have behind a one-ton dually?
Sure, they haven't had much model diversity over their 75-year lifespan, but many changes have taken place. Bob will be the first tell you most of the design alteration for Airstream is on the inside of the trailer. By just looking at the year-over-year lineup, you can tell they've made minor modifications to the platforms over the years but, basically, the only significant differences are in the interior designs. In fact, you can pretty easily date (at least to the decade) an Airstream by what the interiors look like. And it wasn't until recently (1995) that a designer from San Francisco redid one Airstream vehicle in a contemporary, almost IKEA-esque design that helped the trailers make a huge comeback. Additionally, the company had strong sales for several years after September 11, 2001 (as did the entire RV industry), selling almost 2000 units per year. But things are different today. In fact, when looking for a new way to combat slumping sales, they decided to look to other RV segments. The biggest-selling segment in the RV industry for the last few years has been what's called the Toy Haulers. Depending on where you live, you've probably seen these longer travel trailers that taper up near the back end, where the entire rear wall drops down like a draw bridge, opening up what amounts to a garage where ATVs and motorcycles can be stored. Some even have fold-up or drop-down beds installed. The result is a towable living room, kitchen, bath, and bedroom, with an incorporated garage for the playtoys.
Not surprisingly, the design staff at Airstream (admittedly a small department) came up with a concept PanAmerican trailer to gauge dealer reaction. The trailer offers a swing-up rear door to allow access to small (10x10-ft), separate storage area. From what we're told, the dealers went ballistic over it. For now it's only available on a 34-ft, triple-axle trailer; but it's possible, they tell us, applications could branch out to other, smaller, less-expensive trailers. Seems like a no-brainer. The only trick when loading one of these icons is making sure to be careful getting the rearward weight properly balanced, which obviously affects your proper tongue weight. Too many toys in the garage area means not enough weight on the hitch—and conversely, not enough toys in the back means you could overload tongue weight. Of course, it helps that, like all other Airstream models, the PanAmerican has a low center of gravity and ground clearance so no matter how the trailer is loaded, it's likely to feel quite stable.
Look for PanAmericans to hold a premium price tag of around $80,000, but much of that will depend on exactly how you set it up. We'd love to see a modern icon like Airstream continue to experiment and maybe even branch out from its singular strength. Maybe looking at the success other icons like Porsche, Jeep, and Cadillac are having, stretching the rigid definitions of the brand in ways they previously couldn't imagine, could be the right model to follow. We'll keep our eye on Airstream.