Airstream

About Airstream

Airstream is a brand of luxury recreational vehicle manufactured in Jackson Center, Ohio, USA. The company, which employs approximately 400, is the oldest in the industry. Airstream trailers are easily recognized for their distinctive rounded aluminum bodies, which originated in the 1930s from designs largely created by Hawley Bowlus. Bowlus was the chief designer of Charles Lindbergh's aircraft, the Spirit of St. Louis.

The company was founded by Wally Byam, who began building Masonite trailers in his backyard in Los Angeles during the late 1920s. Byam, a lawyer by training, published a magazine selling "how-to" kits to customers wishing to build their own trailers. He then acquired the struggling Bowlus Company. In 1936 Byam introduced the "Airstream Clipper", which was essentially a rebadged 1935 Bowlus, with the door relocated. The design cut down on wind resistance and thus improved gas mileage. It was the first of the now familiar sausage-shaped, silver aluminum Airstream trailer. Of more than 400 trailer builders operating in 1936, Airstream was the only one to survive the Depression. During World War II, travel became a luxury most could not afford and non-military industries faced an acute aluminum shortage. When World War II ended, the economy boomed, and people's attention once again turned towards leisure travel. Byam's company went back into production in 1948. In July 1952 a new facility in Jackson Center, Ohio, was established. 1979 saw the last Airstreams to be manufactured in California.

In 1974 Airstream began manufacturing a Class A motorhome, badged "Argosy". These began as painted aluminum 20- and 24-foot (6.1 and 7.3 m) models, and were followed in 1979 by the first of their Classic model motorhomes, with an unpainted aluminum body, much like the trailers.