(2 of 13)
Of success waiting to happen.
Of ideas too early, too late and right on the money.
A SHRINE TO THE RV
I was built for comfort; I ain't built for speed. But I got everything a good man need. WILLIE DIXON
If we were smarter, Elkhart, Ind. (pop. 43,627), would have been our first stop on the Summer of '98 Secret Capitals Tour. Why? Because we could have bought a motor home the size of Graceland and then cruised in prefab splendor, instead of staring moose-eyed at flight-delayed lights in airports across the land. We could have taken a band along too--Elkhart is also the band-instrument capital of the world--and turned this thing into a national polka fest.
The question we carried into each of these capital cities was this: What effect does the celebrated industry have on local life, culture, business? In Elkhart, the answer can be packed into one little factoid.
They have an RV museum and Hall of Fame (T shirts $12).
But don't laugh at Elkhart. Fifty-two percent of the area's 156,000-member work force is employed in RV-related industry, and roughly half the $10 billion worth of recreational vehicles produced nationally come from this area. You'd build a shrine too.
So maybe the hall--technically it's the RV/Manufactured Housing Museum, Hall of Fame and Library--doesn't have the appeal of Cooperstown, N.Y. But the lines are shorter. The day we pulled up, in fact, there was nobody in the place but caretaker Al Hesselbart, so we got a personal tour of RVs that date all the way back to 1913.
For a long stretch of time, there was virtually no design difference between the RV and a kitchen appliance. Remember those silver boxes lumbering down the highway like two-slice toasters? They've got them here. They also have a little Ralph Kramden affair, from 1964, called the Coachmen Cadet. We mention this because the Coachmen story is the lemonade stand all over again, which is why founder Tom Corson's photo is one of the 185 black-and-white mugs hanging in the RV Hall of Fame.
The story goes like this:
Way back in 1933, an Elkharter (Elkhartian? Elkhartonian?) named Wilbur Schult goes to the World's Fair and sees Ray Gilkison of Terre Haute with a homemade trailer and figures he can top it. So he starts a business, drawing other copycats and a support industry. Then in 1962 along comes Corson, who gets a job on an RV assembly line, moves into sales and then calls brothers Claude and Keith. Guess what? he says. We can do better.
The three Coachmen started in a two-car garage in 1962 and made 12 trailers the first year. Last year Coachmen, the largest among 72 RV manufacturers in Indiana and one of the top three nationally, sold 28,000 RVs for $661 million. "It was the best year ever, and the numbers are up for this year," says president Keith Corson.
They're up industry-wide, 11.6% in the first quarter, to their highest level in 20 years. People want bigger and better RVs, says Corson, who sells everything from a $3,500 folding trailer to a $160,000 motor home the size of the Love Boat. They want AC, microwave, satellite dishes, PC stations, hydraulic slide-outs to expand room size when parked. If Coachmen could figure out how to make one with a back lawn, some Joe's going to buy the damn thing and mow it while Ethel does 65 on the interstate.