Design Moment: Airstream Clipper, 1936

A rare sight on Irish roads – though some are being used as food trucks by enterprising outdoor catering companies – the Airstream Clipper is still instantly recognisable as a quintessential American design. Perhaps it’s the movies.

Wally Byam had been designing trailers – or caravans as we’d have them – and selling plans for them for $5 each since the 1920s, before hitting on the name Airstream in 1934. He set up his own company and in 1936 fulfilled the promise of a trailer that cruised down the road “like a stream of air” with this Clipper model.

With its riveted aluminium body it looked more like an aircraft than a trailer, and it was able to sleep four – the kitchen table converted into a bed and had electric lights and its own water supply. At $1,200 it was expensive, especially during the Depression era, but the demand for this very modern mobile home was strong.

Production ceased for the duration of the war (the aluminium was needed for weapons) but Byam’s California-based Airstream Trailers Inc boomed in post-war America as the nation discovered leisure travel and took to the road.