BUYING OUR AIRSTREAM INTERSTATE

My last post talked about the general barriers to buying a good used Airstream Interstate.  This post deals with the specific example of the vehicle that became our own.

We bought it the old fashioned way - by pressing BUY IT NOW on an eBay listing.

I'm not going to link to either the listing or the seller until I explain a few things, and maybe not even then, for reasons I will describe.  

We live on the south side of greater Houston Texas and the unit was located 600 miles away near Memphis Tennessee, and so we faced exactly the long-distance challenge I was hoping to avoid for the sanity of all concerned.

My husband was running every search macro known to mankind even though I had told him that I really did not want to search outside of about a 300 mile radius, so that we could physically get to the vehicle and see it before committing to the sale.  When this unit popped up on eBay, he emailed it to me anyway, despite the failure of my distance criterion.  I did not look at it for the first couple of days, but then in a moment of boredom I decided I would review the posting just for future listing comparison purposes.  But this particular Airstream had me at "hello" - it was immaculate, I loved the design and lay-out, it had only 25,000 miles on it, and so we decided to pursue the purchase despite the distance.

Obviously I did a little meme switcheroo with that last thumbnail. And I don't have a boyfriend.  Just a fantastic husband.     

Here's where things got difficult.  Given that my husband and I both have jobs and the thing was located too far away for us to see it on short notice, we worked in absentia to hire a local mechanic to verify its condition.  We did our homework and our chosen mechanic shop was well-rated on the internet, but they did a very poor job of reviewing the vehicle - they missed a number of obvious system failures.  My theory is that, in the style of a superficially-beautiful woman, the vehicle is such a looker that it fooled everyone who examined it for quality purposes.  If you remember nothing else from this post, commit this much to memory:

Just because an Airstream Interstate looks enchanting on the outside doesn't necessarily mean that it's in good working condition on the inside.

Start repairs tomorrow, that is.  Literally we started repairing it the day after we bought it.  

Our seller is a flipper of primarily Airstream trailers (not motorhomes).  He seems like a very nice young man and we don't believe that he intended any deception.  However, the vehicle that he described in his eBay listing as having had a recent "top to bottom inspection" and "is free of any fluid leaks or mechanical problems" was anything but sound.  To his credit, the seller paid post-sale for our first two repairs, an amount of money totaling about $500.  However, the next several repairs we decided to take on ourselves, using our own time and money, rather than quibble further with the seller (I will discuss all of those repairs in subsequent blog posts).

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  The moral of this story is that you are taking your chances if you buy a used Airstream Interstate.  If it's a private-party sale, your seller might be out of his depth where representations are concerned, unless he is specifically an Interstate / Sprinter expert.  You need to do your homework (which is almost impossible if you are buying over a long distance) and you need to be realistic about what you're getting yourself into.  An older Interstate simply will not be a problem-free Interstate.

Despite these challenges, buy it we did!!  I will leave you with a short photo essay describing our journey from Memphis back home to Houston with our new Airstream underneath us.

Late night serenity:  Our plan was to complete the sale in person early on a Saturday morning.  We left after work on Friday and caught a late flight to Memphis using my Southwest Airlines frequent flyer miles.  The airport was so still and peaceful, with almost nobody else remaining at that hour.   

Early morning hell breaking loose:  I had booked us into a chain hotel on the fly (pun intended).  We were in such a rush that I didn't have time to check the place out - it had an airport shuttle, we could crash there, and that was good enough for our purposes.  Little did I know that it overlooked a ready-mix concrete plant!!  Shortly before 6:00 a.m., I was awakened by an extraordinary racket.  I threw open the hotel curtains only to see front-end loaders, screw conveyors, air filter vibrational cleaners, pneumatic transfer pumps, and rotating drums all in a simultaneous cacophony of action.   

First contact: Noisy hotel parking lot, Memphis Tennessee.  It was a bit like meeting a new puppy for the first time at an animal shelter.
:-)  

An auspicious sign:  We closed the sale 1.5 miles from Graceland but did not have time to visit because we needed to return to Houston same-day.  However, I did convince my husband to at least drive by it so I could see it from a distance.  I told him that I'd like to name our Airstream "Graceland", more in reference to Paul Simon's 1986 work than to the manse itself.

"And I've reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland."

Baby's first steps:  Setting out on the open road, IH-55 southbound toward Jackson Mississippi.  The first thing we had to do was to figure out how to actually drive it, this unlikely contraption that is two feet taller than it is wide.  The easiest thing to do is to drop your automobile preconceptions and simply listen to what the vehicle is telling you on any given road and in any given conditions.  It will directly inform you of its handling needs, if you listen carefully enough.     

A new and improved perch:  I've been an avid photographer for more than 30 years now, and I was delighted by the extra height afforded by the Airstream, compared to a passenger car.  Swamp in northern Mississippi.  

Into the setting sun:  IH-10, elevated section westward over the Atchafalaya basin, one of the most unique freeway segments in America.  

Cajun country:  Breathtaking in its own way.  

Blogger selfie, somewhere outside of Orange, Texas, nearing the end of a very long 24 hours.  On a bad section of road, it can be pretty rough in the back of an Airstream Interstate, but I will talk more about that in future posts.  

WHY WE CHOSE AN AIRSTREAM INTERSTATE

Every RV choice has both pros and cons associated with it, and there are plenty of good general RV decision-tree sites on the internet, including this one and this one.  Because we made a less conventional choice in the Airstream Interstate, I thought I'd walk you through the sequence of our thought process, so that you might compare to your own internal debates on this subject.

1.  Trailer or Motorhome?  Like every other buyer, the first question that we had to answer for ourselves was whether we wanted a trailer or a motorhome.

One is a self-contained vehicle, one is not.  One is more versatile but that comes at a much higher price.  One is cheaper but comes with a set of logistical restrictions that the other does not have.  It's a huge analysis that must focus on exactly what you intend to do with your RV.

Image courtesy of this Paysafe Escrow site.    

I initially leaned strongly in the direction of getting a trailer, for two reasons:

1. The price, the price, the price!  A trailer is much cheaper for the obvious reason that it does not incorporate a motor vehicle.  It also represents a lot less ongoing maintenance time and money for exactly the same reason.  My husband and I are not retirees (or even near-retirees) who are planning to use our RV extensively.  Therefore it made sense to me to commence our RV experimentation at a more hassle-free, entry-level price point.
2. I had gotten bitten by the Airstream bug about a dozen years earlier courtesy of my former tax accountant Vicki Faust of Austin, Texas.  I'll never forget the day that I walked into her office and she looked at me with the rabid enthusiasm of someone who had just found religion and declared, "You'll never guess what I just got for my new office!"  Knowing Vicki's penchant for off-the-wall creativity, I was at a complete loss.  "What?" I asked meekly.  "AN AIRSTREAM!" she screamed triumphantly.

What now lies within said Airstream?  A financial accounting service business.  Image courtesy of The Tax Trailer.  

I remained in Austin long enough to see her finished Airstream and to marvel at the innovative design that it represented.  After I moved to Houston, Vicki and her partner went on to develop Kimber Modern, a boutique hotel that received design awards and rave reviews, even in the New York Times.  And the Airstream?  It ended up perched on the roof of the new hotel.  Now that is outside-the-box creative thinking.

So I initially thought that I wanted an Airstream of our own.  My husband, however, had different ideas, especially following our 6,000-mile round trip to far eastern Canada via (gulp!) my existing minivan in the summer of 2014.  In his mind, a trailer would essentially represent a lateral move because it would not furnish us with additional comfort in real time on long trips.  If we were towing a trailer, we would all still be packed like sardines in the same vehicle (or worse, a pickup truck) for 12 to 14 hours a day, and what good would that do us?

2.  Vintage, used, or new?  On the basis of that inescapable logic, I conceded to my husband's wishes for a motorhome, but I imposed two conditions:

• The chosen motorhome could not, I repeat, could not be ugly.  My whole purpose in wanting a motorhome was to get away from stinky gross hotel rooms and stinky airport terminals and stinky greasy junk food outlets while traveling.  If we ended up with a stinky ugly motorhome, that would represent the ultimate in lateral moves, since we were on the subject of what would be lateral and what would be a reasonable travel upgrade.  So I wanted a nice motorhome or I wanted no motorhome at all.  Which made our next mutually-agreed condition very problematic:
• The chosen motorhome had to be within our budget, which we ballparked at $50,000.  

An average low-end motorhome:  This hot mess is my definition of ugly, like monochromatic plastic and particle-board ugly has never been seen before on Earth.  Unfortunately, RV decor tends to lag prevailing trends in the consumer market by a full 20 to 30 years.  I speculate that this is because most RVs are purchased by retirees, and retirees tend to identify with styles that existed back when they themselves were in their adult prime.  This is a screenshot chosen at random of a 2013-ish RV, but it looks very much like 1988 threw up in there.

And this is an example from the resale market, built and furnished in the late 1990's.  LATE 1990's?!?!? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!  IT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE GRANDMA'S HOUSE DID IN 1975!!!!  

Even the exteriors of the common smaller models are uglier than I could possibly withstand.

Typical smaller RV with the brand name redacted so that my opinions will not offend any manufacturer's corporate attorneys.  I'm sorry, but this is so ugly that I'd rather travel in a hearse.  They simply could not have made this boxy, schizoid thing any more of a visual disaster no matter how hard they might have tried. 

I was initially open to the idea of vintage, but only if it had been previously restored, and restored well.  I figured that my husband and I were going to spend so much time on basic DIY maintenance to start with that there's no way we, as a dually-employed couple, would have time to take on any restoration whatsoever.

My husband was very keen on the idea of a GMC motorhome from the 1970's.  Like Airstream, they have a cult following and most of those originally produced are still on the road today.  They can be had for reasonable prices even if fully restored.  One drawback is that they are gasoline-powered rather than diesel, and thus the fuel-related cost of ownership would be enormous.  We were looking semi-seriously at one for sale in California but our enthusiasm was dampened considerably by the knowledge that it would take about $700 in gasoline just to drive it back to our home in Texas.

The other drawback for me was the lack of safety features such as structural collision zones and air bags, features that hadn't even been conceived of when these things were first designed decades ago.  We looked at a pair of non-restored GMCs at Channelview Supply in greater Houston.  Sitting in the front passenger seat, I felt very vulnerable.  Even a minor front-end impact seemed like it might be catastrophic from an injury standpoint.

This unit pictured above is one of the prettiest GMCs I have seen on the web, but I don't have a reference URL for the pic.   

We initially found no acceptable new, used or vintage RVs for sale in our price range, and we scoured both the internet and local dealer lots looking for contenders.

Because of our budget and my husband's desire to use the vehicle for A&M football tailgating purposes as well as longer travel (thus it had to be small enough to fit in the proverbial "regular parking space"), we concentrated on Class B motorhomes.  These were two used models for sale at a dealer in the Sugar Land, Texas area.  

Savvy readers will see that enormous freeway fly-over in the background and instantly recognize this as the PPL Houston facility.  PPL has a very efficient and organized process for RV shopping.  You walk in and they hand you a list of what's currently on the lot.  Each vehicle has a posting on the windshield that coordinates with the list.  Their website also contains concise summaries of what's for sale.  

3.  Final choice of model?  When we discovered the Airstream Interstate, we immediately realized that it represented the obvious compromise between my desire for an Airstream trailer and my husband's preference for a Class B motorhome.

This is not your mother's or grandmother's hopelessly-dated RV, obviously.  The warm modern / contemporary styling of the interior met my aesthetic requirements.  As I stated above, this was a non-negotiable requirement of mine.  We are going to be spending many, many hours per day inside a space approximately 100 square feet in size.  If we are not pleased by the sight of that space, it's not going to bode well for the quality of the experience.

The most frequent comment I receive upon showing people this picture is, "THAT is your RV?  It's gorgeous!  I could live in that thing!"  The translation is obvious:  people wouldn't want to live in most ordinary RVs.  It has less to do with size and more to do with the fact that they are simply too ugly to tolerate for more than short periods of time.  

Upon settling on the Airstream Interstate, our considerable challenge then became finding one for sale in our price range, a task that involved a lot of compromise, financial risk, and decisiveness.  But that is a story for another blog post.

Vicki, you are partly responsible for the fact that we spent sixty thousand dollars on this Airstream contraption on the left (cross-continental-traveling minivan for scale on the right).  I still don't know whether to curse you or thank you for your influence on my artistic sensibilities.
:-) 

WHY AN AIRSTREAM INTERSTATE BLOG?

I covered part of that answer in my first "Welcome" post where I talked about our need to DIY a lot of our own Airstream Interstate (AI) work due to the expected costs.  But I also wanted to consolidate information via a blog as a "cut to the chase" information source, one that provides step-by-step pictorial instructions for resolving common predicaments.

Each online medium has strengths and limitations, and blogs have a role to play in that mix.  There are several invaluable online forums already available to AI owners, including these two:

Namely the Air Forums and Sprinter-Forum sites.
Mastheads screengrabbed from each respective source. 

Forums claim the strength of uniting a large number of like-minded individuals for the purpose of information-sharing on very specific topics.  However, they are limited in being somewhat inefficient conversation-based sources through which you won't necessarily find enough information to resolve any given issue (I can't tell you how many times I've read all the way through a long, long thread only to find that nobody could offer constructive solutions).

Regardless of how much DIY-ing you plan to do on your own AI, one thing will surely be true - you spent a boat-load of money to buy it, and dealing with its inevitable hiccups and issues will surely be a source of frustration unless you can find answers quickly and efficiently.   

With a blog, I can pull the best suggestions, tips, and observations from the applicable forum threads, combine that stuff with what my husband and I actually do with our AI, and produce efficient content, hopefully with some stress-relieving humor along the way.

Because everyone needs stress-reducing humor. An Airstream Interstate is a highly intricate and quirky piece of equipment, jumbling together many different manufacturers into a single product.  Anything with that degree of complexity is going to develop issues that can become frustrating if not dealt with efficiently.  

 So that's my general line of thinking - it's not my intention to try to upstage the forums, but rather to enhance them.  See you in the detailed posts to come.

WELCOME!

Welcome to The Interstate Blog!  If you are underwhelmed by its simplistic, unimaginative title, I assure you that its content will be more interesting than the name suggests!  My husband and I are new to the Airstream Interstate world but I am a blogging veteran, and I've found over the years that the KISS principle works best when conveying information about online resources.

My inaugural Airstream meme.  Airstreme meme.

Base vehicle image courtesy of Airstream.  

Let me give you some 411 on our intentions here.  This blog will be strictly a noncommercial information-sharing resource.  We are not affiliated with any commercial entities.  We are not out to make any money from any person.  Consistent with my policy on my other blogs, any assertive attempts to supply us with products, perks, or other commodities of value in exchange for potential exposure will be redirected to an appropriate charity.

Do not even think of commenting or emailing if you are trying to sell something or promote yourself.  Emails will be deleted, comments disallowed.   

My husband and I decided to buy our first motorhome after taking ourselves, our child, and our dog on a 6,000-mile, I said SIX THOUSAND MILE!! road trip from Texas to the Canadian province of Nova Scotia in the summer of 2014 in (*gulp*) my minivan.

This is what the poor thing looked like after the first 3,000 miles.  We built that wooden cargo platform to help ease and organize the load, but this is not a cross-continental vehicle.  

So after that eye-opening experience, we said to ourselves, "OMG, there has to be a better way!!"

I like memes, so you better get used to 'em if you plan on being a regular reader.  

After a lot of soul-searching and a lengthy vetting process during which we looked at every model of Class B and Class C ever invented by mankind, my husband and I both agreed that the Airstream Interstate (aka Airstream Sprinter) was the best choice for our needs.  There was just one really, REALLY big problem.

A HUNDRED AND FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS?!
HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?!?!

Image screengrabbed from this Colonial Airstream link which will probably be broken by the time you click it.  

My husband and I are not wealthy people - we are ordinary working stiffs.  We realized right away that a brand new Interstate was completely out of the question for us.  If we wanted one, two things were going to have to happen:

1. We were going to have to buy a used model.
2. We would need to do a lot of the care, maintenance, and upgrades ourselves, on a DIY basis.  We could not afford to pay Mercedes-certified technicians more money per hour to service the thing than we ourselves were making in our own employment.  

After about six weeks of searching, we found our Interstate, but that's a story for another post.  Suffice it to say that, in the first few weeks of our ownership, we have already benefited substantially from the collective wisdom offered by the online community, and it is our intention to reciprocate where and when we can so that we are able to support the other DIY-ers just as they have unknowingly supported us.

We welcome ourselves to your Interstate world.  Glad we could join you.

No, that would not be us - ours is going to be well-used and well-investigated.  We didn't own it more than about 2 weeks before we started pulling stuff apart and upgrading it.  But you'll have to wait for those forthcoming posts.