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 * 06-03-22


SEE HOW THE ICONIC AIRSTREAM HAS EVOLVED OVER THE PAST 90 YEARS


A NEW MUSEUM SHOWCASES THE INSTANTLY RECOGNIZABLE DESIGN THAT’S BEEN SHAPED BY
WORLD HISTORY.

[Photo: Airstream]
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Like a silver torpedo barreling down the highway, the Airstream trailer is an
iconic sight on American roads. The streamlined curving aluminum shell is
instantly recognizable, partly because the design has remained nearly constant
throughout the company’s nine decades in business.




But despite their distinct appearance, the trailers and motor homes produced by
Airstream actually have changed over time, and the design of these vehicles has
dovetailed with both American and world history. These historical influences are
the subject of a new museum at the company’s headquarters in Jackson Center,
Ohio.



[Photo: Airstream]The Airstream Heritage Center features more than a dozen
vintage Airstream models produced since the company’s founding in 1931,
including the first riveted aluminum model, introduced in 1938. In addition to
fully outfitted trailers and motor homes that visitors can explore, the museum
features a trove of company archival material, ranging from blueprints to
marketing films to early sketches of the first Airstreams drawn by company
founder, Wally Byam.





[Photo: Airstream]As with many corporate museums, it’s a walk-through
advertisement for Airstream, but one that highlights the ways in which the
trailer has evolved over the years, from the early days of international RV
travel and the emergence of the interstate highway system to the
Instagram-fueled #vanlife. With reported net sales of $2.73 billion in 2021,
Airstream has enjoyed a pandemic-related boom, producing thousands of trailers
every year.







[Photo: Airstream]Samantha Martin is the curator of the new museum, and she says
that while the Airstreams on display show how the shape of the Airstream has
remained mostly constant over time, models through the decades reflect changing
technologies and global development. “You start to see some of the subtle
evolutions,” says Martin, “from the very first aluminum Airstream in the ’30s to
the post World War II aviation influence in the late ’40s models and so on.”
Learning from the aviation industry, Byam developed new designs that reduced
weight and improved aerodynamics. The trailers shrunk even more in the 1960s as
smaller vehicles became more popular in the U.S.





[Photo: Airstream]The museum also features film and photography from the early
days of motor-home caravan travel, including a 1951 trip from Texas to Central
America that included more than 60 Airstreams. Led by Byam himself, this caravan
would lead to others through the 1950s and ’60s that crisscrossed Europe and
Africa. Byam’s own Airstream was decorated with a hand-painted list of his
international road trips during this time, more than 10 in less than a decade.



The Airstream was more than just a vacationer’s vehicle. It became part of the
space race in the 1960s, serving as an official segment of NASA’s Apollo mission
to the moon. Four modified Airstreams were created to serve as temporary
quarantines for astronauts returning from the moon. “There was a fear that they
could come in contact with some sort of lunar pathogen, so they needed a way to
keep the astronauts quarantined from the site of the splashdown until they made
it back to the receiving laboratory in Houston,” Martin says. One of those
modified trailers, designed without wheels to sit on either a boat, aircraft
carrier, or flatbed truck, is on display in the museum.





[Photo: Airstream]Another modified Airstream became NASA’s official transport
during the Space Shuttle era, driving astronauts the short distance from their
suit-up area to the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for nearly 30
years.



The museum also tracks the company’s growth and evolution over time, including a
brief stint producing fuel-efficient aluminum-based delivery trucks during the
oil crisis of the 1970s. A decade later, the company went in the opposite
direction, creating supersize models, some with three axles. One model was even
named the Land Yacht. “The ’80s was that ‘bigger is better’ era,” Martin says.

Today, the company has shifted again to meet the moment. Partnerships with
brands ranging from Pottery Barn to Eddie Bauer have revamped interiors,
automatous-driving technology has been harnessed to create a self-parking
trailer, and the pandemic has led some to see an Airstream as a remote-work
paradise.



Each step in this evolution is on display at the museum. But for all the change
that has shaped and reshaped the Airstream, its bullet-like form has withstood
the test of time. “That iconic shell has essentially stayed the same over the
years,” Martin says.





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