Trailer Tribe - Exploring The World Of Vintage RVs
When people find out that I'm a "vintage trailer" guy, the questions begin. How do you find one? How much do they cost? How hard are they to restore" Where do you find parts? The list goes on.
There are lots of ways to find a vintage trailer, from peeking over fences to the most popular, the Internet. My friend David Izenman was trolling ads on Craigslist.com and came across a listing for a 1948 La Cosse trailer for $800. He quickly called and arranged to meet the sellers within the hour. He ran to the bank, got some cash and rushed over. As always, the trailer was not as nice as it looked in the photos, which is almost always the case, but he saw good bones and after a little haggling, he bought the trailer for $600 and towed it home. Now most people would take one look at this trailer and run screaming, but like anything else, with enough elbow grease and imagination, you can turn any ugly duckling into a beautiful swan.
The inside of the trailer was disgusting and covered in nicotine from a lifetime of being smoked in. The roof was layered with many coats of tar and a swamp cooler that was half the size of the trailer adorned the peak. David pulled every last thing off the trailer and spent a week with a heat gun stripping the roof and another week with a bucket of TSP cleaning the interior. All the original mahogany wood was stripped and re-finished and a new coat of pistachio green paint was sprayed on the interior metal.
The body of the trailer was pretty beat up, so the good folks at Iowa Boys (a trailer restoration shop in Southern California) put their best body guy on it and also polished it to a high shine. Somebody had actually split the trailer up the sides at the wheel wells at one point, so David came up with a very sleek and easy to cut fender skirt to cover over the scar. He added a new floor, 12-volt system and new plumbing, plus a lot of vintage fabrics and knick-knacks to make his time capsule complete. By doing much of the work himself, David figures he has about $8,000 into the trailer that is likely worth between $12,000 and $15,000 to a serious enthusiast.
Just as I was finishing this article, he called to tell me the trailer had been picked to be displayed at the 2011 Palm Springs Modernism Show.
The ugly duckling has arrived!
