Airstream has been building trailers since the 1930s, their easily identifiable all-aluminium bodies are a feature of highways around the world. The Airstream design was created by Hawley Bowlus, that’s the same unusually named chap who designed Charles Lindbergh’s aircraft, the Spirit of St. Louis.
Interestingly Airstream trailers are used by the US Military to transport officials and senior ranking officers, they strap an Airstream trailer inside a military cargo plane to create a sort of quasi-luxury-jet, NASA also used an Airstream to quarantine the 1969 Apollo 11 astronauts when they returned from the Moon to ensure they didn’t bring back any nasty pathogens from the Lunar surface.
Nowadays Airstream employs 400 or so people in the USA and still produces the same aerodynamic (20% more efficient than a normal trailer) designs with more modern, updated interiors. The model pictured below is the Airstream Sport and has a RRP of about $35,000 depending on your dealer.
Ben Branch has had his work featured on CNN, Popular Mechanics, the official Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with millions of readers around the world and hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
For years I have drooled over the styling of Harleys and Indians from the 1940’s. I also inspired by the images of TROG in the USA. Finding and affording an original Harley or Indian of this era was beyond my means so this created an opportunity to build a replica with a twist.
Bruce F. Meyers, the inventor of the Meyers Manx, grew up in California deeply involved in the surfing scene, and driving a 1930’s vintage Ford to the beach. His interest in surfing and the ocean naturally led into sail boats and thus to a journey into the South Seas on a schooner shared with a few friends where he learned about sailing outrigger canoes, and learned a great deal about the sea and boats.
Under the hood of the Berardini Bros 1932 Ford was a Flathead V8 so dominant on the 1/4 mile drag strips of the LA-area in the 1950s that the very sound of it would strike fear into the hearts of its competitors. Pat and Tony Berardini won the Gas and Fuel Street Roadster Championships from…
This Ford Model T Track-Nose is one of the most well-known hot rods of its era, it was built by Jack Thompson with help from Claude Hampson, and it appeared in the August 1958 issue of Hot Rod Magazine. Track-Nose hot rods have a distinctive look that sets them apart from their more traditional counterparts,…
This film is a little different to many that I’ve featured here on Silodrome in the past, there’s no commentary or sound of any kind, just 17 (and a bit) minutes of people sending their motorcycles up a hillside somewhere in the USA in the 1930s. The machines are mostly American V-twins from Harley-Davidson and…
Editor’s Note: The new FTR 1200 has now been released. You can click to see the Silodrome Cheat Sheet for the new Indian FTR 1200 and the FTR 1200 S. The Indian FTR1200 is a perfect fit for Paris-born Dimitri Coste, a photographer, motorcycle racer, and film director famous for his larger than life personality,…
