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.
:-)