AVION Travel Trailers

Funny thing today ... I have a neighbor down the road that has been flipping Airstreams and the occasional Avion for the last couple of years. He does the typical flip: polish the exterior, gut the interior, new floors, and some appliances. However, he leaves all the cabinets and finish work for the future buyer. I think he is doing pretty well and does some great work. He is not particular on brands or anything - just trying to make a living at it. Very good skills overall.

Anyway, the 66' Airstream Sovereign (30') my Dad bought new and traded in locally on my current 90' 30'P is not something you see often. However, the one this guy is fixing up now looked similar - so I stopped by to take a tour today. We are doing some research together, but it is actually possible that he has the actual trailer we had once upon a time. If not the same one, it is certainly the same spec and year so I got to reminisce a bit by looking around to recognize and some features and fixtures that I remember from 40+ years ago. You never know, but if we can get some numbers and pictures we might find some proof one way or the other.

I took a good tour of the inside, which was in the midst of all kinds of rehab with new floors in some places and down to the frame in others. What I can say is that I am completely amazed at the difference in structural design between the frames of the two trailers. I mean the frame design and differences in gauges is on a completely different scale! Having spend most of last summer bemoaning all the heavy work of repairing and rebuilding much of the rear bath in my 30P, I am so eternally grateful now that I had so much more to work with in terms of structure and material. I think the trailers are almost 1000 lbs difference in weight yet both are 30', so there is that. Not sure what my Avion will look like when it is 54 years old, but if I can keep the water out - it may still have a solid frame if nothing else.

Yes.... night and day differences, huh?

But look at it this way: If Airstream didn't have it's deficiencies, we would not have Avion, Silver Streak, Streamline, etc! But why AS wouldn't improve their design? I guess there's no need.......... there are plenty of folks lined up to pay whatever they are asking them to pay.

Could be AS just rolled the dice on the frame. If it survived past warranty, it wasn't their problem. You could speculate that the design engineer:
A. Specified one grade of steel and the purchasing agent (or an MBA) purchased another
B. Manufacturing defect at the mill supplying the steel
C. Math error on the design engineers part

Personally, I go with they rolled the dice.
AND
Like Razorback, thank god for Airstream. Without them we would not have the alternatives.

Anyone know what happened with that group that wanted to restart Silver Streak? I remember a go fund me, article, but then nada.

My Avion is actually my 3rd vintage aluminum travel trailer. First was a Silver Streak (sitting in it now, it's been my office for several years) then a 30' Airstream that slowly became disassembled into all it's individual parts as the need for repair became more apparent as each piece was removed. It is now sitting with it's frame parked in front of its shell awaiting me to care enough to get back at it. The frame is mind blowingly thin, that'll change to a considerable degree by the time I'm done.
The Avion and the Silver Streak for that matter are light years ahead in build quality.
I guess it's like VHS vs BETAMAX though, marketing trumped quality.

Ian

enjoyed reading this! Before we got our Avion, I wasn't aware of the difference. In fact I thought our friend's "silver trailer" was an airstream. I always loved the trailer and asked them to please think of us first if they ever wanted to sell it. When they told me they were selling it and I started doing research I realized the difference. I know it felt much nicer than the airstreams I had looked at. Now I'm a zealot, spreading the word about the superior Avion. my friends and aquainences look skeptical, but so what. (none of them have airstreams)

I have a hobby of looking for interesting campers, and recently saw a 90s airstream that looked suspiciously like my Avion. and I know most airstreams lack the fit and finish and interior build quality of the Avion. so I wondered if the airstream was copying the Avion at times....

I was blessed as a kid to have a father that had several travel trailers. He worked his way up from an Apache tent camper, to 19’ Nomad, then a 23’ Mobile Scout, then a 27’ Airstream, then a 34’ Avion....., that’s where I got to know the differences. Don’t get me wrong: Avion had their share of issues, but the base build quality was head and shoulders above an Airstream. Dad could not stand the “herd mentality” of a lot of the AS crowd.... that definitely rubbed off on me.

“To each his own”, I always say. But knowing that we have a superb version of a “silver trailer” is comforting.

One thing of note, which was actually confirmed in a recent tour of the Airstream factory, is that many Airstream floors used to be plywood on frame with fiberglass batten insulation, but now in the more modern ones it is bubble wrap? Unless you all know differently is the Avion laminate with foam board unique?

I can see the bubble wrap having it’s place as I use that on wheel wells and duct work with some foam board mixed in.

I don’t think any year of Airstream ever used foam. I know my 79 didn’t.

Is your bubblewrap just regular Reflectix from Lowes?

It is the Home Depot wrap. Nothing special really, but I upgraded to the pink board recently as a supplement on the wheel wells and that helped some. That bubble wrap is hard to pin down so I used some Pella window tape to secure it.