While it could be said that Airstream has resisted change, preferring to leave intact the iconic symbol that is its Classic, bullet-shaped, aluminum travel trailer while much of the industry – and, indeed, its sister divisions within Thor Industries Inc.—have embraced innovations such as slideouts and SURV floorplans, Airstream can clearly stand by its decision with pride as one of the most revered products in the U.S. today.

Yet, Chairman Bob Wheeler is quick to point out that the company is not deaf to requests from its dealer body, and as a result, debuted its first ramp-style trailer at the Louisville Show with an eye toward servicing buyers with disabilities. “We are inundated with requests for ‘mobility-friendly’ units,” he said, in reference to user-friendly vehicles for handicapped Rvers and the commercial industry. “So, while the PanAmerica serves well as a ‘toy box,’ our secondary goal was to meet these other demands. We recognized that we needed to have a platform that reached more than one market.”

The 34-foot PanAmerica trailer unveiled at Louisville meet those needs—and them some. The rear 11 feet of the Airstream has been reconfigured as a garage/storage area, and a fold-down ramp is now incorporated into the trailer’s tail end. “We put in a huge payload,” Wheeler noted, adding that the company swapped out the regular axels on the triple-axle 11,500-pound trailer for heavy-duty components. “We could actually go up to 14,000 pounds.”

Wheeler said the PanAmerica ramp trailer, which offers “a very contemporary interior with lots of integration of materials that we haven’t used before, including many European touches,” was actually brought in as a concept vehicle “to evaluate the interest level of the industry and our dealers.”

By the end of the show, however, “it was thumbs up all the way around, “Wheeler said, adding that PanAmerica Toy Box will go into production in the spring as a 2009 model. “We’ve decided to pull the trigger,” he said of the 34-footer, which will retail for $80,000, while 25- and 30-foot units also may be in the pipeline.

Courtesy RV Business magazine January 2008 

After leaving Alfred University with a graduate degree in fine arts and hefty student loans to pay off, Alleghany Meadows began thinking of ways to make some quick money from his artwork.

He and a friend decided to drive a van full of their paintings across several states, to try to sell them at a Tupperware party hosted by another friend's parents. The idea paid off.

Nine years later, Meadows has upgraded the concept to a mobile crafts gallery he runs from a converted 1967 Airstream trailer.

Many artists wanting to move beyond the reach of traditional galleries have taken their work on the road, whether across town or across the country. The result is usually an art project in its own right, as the renovated trucks and trailers draw curious stares and inquisitive peeks inside.
That, the artists say, is precisely the point.

"We wanted to figure out a way to make our artistic interests functional in the world, so they didn't seem removed and specialized and only for a privileged audience to go and look at," says 25-year-old Brooke Chroman. Along with two fellow art-school graduates, Chroman directs a project in Brooklyn called Parts and Labor Gallery (www.partsandlaborgallery.com).

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