Late 1950s Oasis travel trailer. Photos provided by the Ironstone Concours d’Elegance.
Just as with automobiles that range from basic transportation to wealth-flaunting excess, old travel trailers and housecars can run the gamut from simple small towbehinds to veritable palaces on wheels (some even named “Aristocrat”), and as in years past, the organizers of the Ironstone Concours d’Elegance intend to celebrate the entire spectrum of mobile habitats at this year’s event.
“Most are entered by husband-and-wife teams, and restorations are usually a joint effort,” wrote Michael Lamm, the event’s spokesperson. “Many trailers come to Ironstone towed by their owners’ cars, some of which are entered for judging.”
As examples, he pointed out Phil and Ruthie Marler’s 1952 Little Caesar trailer, which will be hitched to their 1952 Willys wagon, and Mike and Aedan Haworth’s 1956 Airstream, which will follow their 1947 Mercury woodie onto the show field.
Kit teardrop trailer in foreground with Bost teardrop behind.
Travel trailers, as Special Interest Autos pointed out in issue #24, September-October 1974, date back to the rise of the automobile industry and earlier, but first became popular as homebuilt units towed around the country by World War I veterans who returned home to find shortages of both jobs and housing. Manufactured travel trailers caught on in the Thirties both as housing for the poor affected by the Depression and as a posh mode of travel for the relatively unscathed rich.
Not until the Sixties did self-contained RVs (or motorhomes, as Travco founder Ray Frank termed them) become mass-produced alternatives to travel trailers, though homebuilt and coachbuilt motorhomes preceded the assembly line versions by about 30 years.
One of the latter, a Brooks Stevens-designed 1936 housecar out of the travel trailer and housecar collection of Vince and Karen Martinico, will join the various travel trailers at this year’s Ironstone Concours. One of a number of Stevens-designed housecars and traveling showrooms, the streamlined 1936 version gets its power from a Ford flathead V-8 engine.
Heilite canvas trailer.
Other travel trailers entered in the class include a 1939 homebuilt teardrop, a 1947 AeroFlite, a trio of Airstreams, a 1959 Diablo “canned ham,” and a 1964 Aristocrat Li’l Loafer.
The 20th annual Ironstone Concours will take place September 24 at the Ironstone Winery in Murphys, California. For more information, visit IronstoneConcours.com.
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