WINTER: High-end trailers sweeten love affair with open road

Published August 11, 2007 at midnight

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Road trips are more American than the Fourth of July.

From Jack Kerouac to Clark Griswold to Willie Nelson, generations of Americans have suffered white-line fever in search of adventure and opportunity and escape.

Motoring is in our mitochondria. I know this just as surely as I know that the moron in front of me is going 20 mph in a 55-mph zone because he is on his cell phone: that I let this summer go by without planning a single road trip is an inexplicable tragedy.

It may be why I went to see the Airstream.

It is not news that these iconic aluminum oblongs - sometimes described as giant toasters on wheels - are the gold standard of travel trailers.

The first Airstream was sold in 1931, and today, two-thirds of all models are still on the road, according to Thor Industries, which produces the trailers at its plant in Jackson Center, Ohio.

Because they're made with aircraft- construction methods, Airstreams are lightweight, strong, fully self-contained and relatively seamless.

Artists and curators love Airstreams for their classic mid-century looks. Designers love them for their pure aerodynamic form and functionality.

People who own them love them because no matter where they go, there's bound to be another Airstreamer to treat them as an old friend.

The most recent people to love them are celebrities.

Matthew McConaughey told USA Today he owns three. Sandra Bullock, Tom Hanks, Pamela Anderson, David Duchovny and Brad Pitt also haul Airstreams. Ralph Lauren bought four and redid the interiors, and Paris Hilton traveled in one on The Simple Life.

Art Garfunkel keeps one in Aspen as a guesthouse, Amanda Bruner of Windish RV Center in Lakewood told me.

For Airstream's 75th anniversary last year, the company rolled out a special-edition model with a sophisticated new interior made for design aficionados.

Design Within Reach, the upscale furnishings chain with stores in Cherry Creek and Boulder, teamed up with San Francisco designer Chris Deam to create a more spacious, lighter-feeling interior for the compact DWR Airstream, featuring Italian laminate countertops, perforated metal cabinet fronts, Maharam upholstery and Matteo linens in apple green and orange, a Nelson Ball clock and custom aluminum window treatments imported from Europe.

The DWR Airstream took a road trip from the Cherry Creek store to the Boulder store the last weekend in July.

It was, to no one's surprise, a crowd pleaser. But it didn't sell. That may be because the sleek interior comes with a hefty premium - around $9,000.

Call it gilding the lily. Just as you would not improve the Mona Lisa by asking Picasso to add a brush stroke here or there, you don't necessarily enhance the Airstream by adding accessories.

As of last week, the DWR model was at Windish RV Center, receiving rock-star treatment in the middle of the showroom floor. (For the record, Windish did sell a DWR model earlier this year.)

On one hand, it's a far cry from Airstream inventor Wally Byam's first trailer back in the 1920s. That one was nothing more than a tent pitched over the chassis of a Ford Model T, which he made for his wife for camping trips.

But Byam quickly discovered the beauty of aluminum. He also discovered America's insatiable desire to head out on the highway, and a legend was born. He sold his first Airstream for $1,200. Today's DWR model is about $50,000.

That might surprise Byam.

But the trailer itself would not. It looks very much like it did over a half-century ago.

Elegant design is timeless, like the tug of the open road.

Design Within Reach Airstream

? Length: 16 feet, 7 inches

? Width, exterior: 8 feet

? Width, interior: 7 feet, 7 inches

? Sleeping capacity: 3

? Designer features: 2 outdoor chairs by Objekto, pull-out awning, Nelson Ball wall clock, Tom Dixon coat rack, Italian laminate countertops, Matteo bedding

? Interior skin covering: bare aluminum

? Other features: 2-burner glass cooktop stove, 6-gallon water heater, Halogen lighting, 15-inch Sony flat-screen TV, CD changer, premium audio package

? Cost: About $50,000

mwinte@aol.com

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