RV Fans: Call Them Happy Campers

“It’s the only way to travel.”

Thus spake Orville Richer, self-described retired “car-peddler” from Toledo, Ohio, who minutes before had pulled into Dodger Stadium parking lot Tuesday afternoon in his brand-new, 1989 model Odyssey motor home. He’d set out a week ago to drive here for the 36th annual Los Angeles RV Show--”just taking my time,” he said. He’s been coming every year for seven years now.

Like a Large Camper

As motor homes go, the Odyssey is what you might call a “compact” model, with a V-6 engine and chassis built by Toyota--not the biggest recreational vehicle on the road by a long stretch. In fact, from the outside it looks deceptively like a large camper. But it’s certainly big enough for one person to live in, with an interior as plushly comfortable as many pricier RVs at this year’s show.

Richer has owned RVs for more than 30 years and buys a new one each year. He is, to say the least, enthusiastic about them: “No phone. No strings. Stop when you’re tired, sleep for a bit, then go on. Don’t have to worry about getting a room for the night.

“I’ve been all over the States. I think I’ll go down to Mexico this winter--just head down there for a while. I want to go to Alaska someday too.”

According to Dave Humphreys, president of the Recreation Vehicle Industry Assn., organizers of the L.A. RV Show (said to be the largest in the country), Richer probably has a lot in common with most RV owners.

The typical motor home owner (as opposed to, say, a camper or travel-trailer owner), Humphreys said, is “over 45, either retired or very successful, usually married with kids and a house, who likes the outdoors--bird watching or fishing or that sort of thing.”

This assessment is borne out by a study of recreational vehicle owners recently published by Burson-Marsteller for the association, which also found that the reasons most often cited for purchasing RVs are, first, love of camping and, second, travel.

Camping, by this definition, has changed considerably since John Muir climbed the Sierra in a shirt and a pair of jeans, carrying dry bread in a sack. In some of the more sophisticated RV models, it’s not so much camping as moving a house.

There is, in fact, an entire American subculture of RV enthusiasts. Many belong to such national organizations as the Family Motor Coach Assn. (the largest such group), the Good Sam Club, Camper Ranch Club of America and others, many of which publish their own magazines (such as Good Sam’s “Hi-Way Herald”), organize tours and produce specialty products for their subscribers.

Motor home owners frequently attend rallies where, as Humphreys put it, “if somebody doesn’t come up and want to look inside your RV, it’s a real insult. It means you just haven’t made the grade.”

And make no mistake, some of the RVs are luxury apartments on wheels.

The boom in the industry, Humphreys said, really came after World War II, before which trailers were used predominantly for temporary housing. It was a time of relative affluence in the United States, when the price of gasoline was negligible, American society was highly mobile and people were taking to the road for all sorts of reasons.

But the manufacture of self-sufficient motorized units as recreation vehicles is more recent.

Since their humble beginnings, RVs have become so popular that there is even talk of establishing an RV museum in Elkhart, Ind., which Humphreys terms “the trailer capital of the world,” because a large number of RV companies have assembly plants there.

Who Buys RVs

In the last 30 years, traveling in RVs has become a life style for many--especially for retired people who want to see the country.

“There are something like 8 million privately owned RVs on the road right now,” Humphreys said, “and we’re going to sell 450,000 units (by the end of) 1988.” But he added that motor homes, as opposed to trailers or campers, constitute only about half of the RVs sold.

It should come as no surprise that by far the biggest market is right here in California.

RVs come in many makes and models: motor homes (complete units built around an engine and chassis), trailers, camper shells, five-wheelers (which attach to the back of a pickup truck) and giant luxury coaches up to 40 feet long. There are about 600 RV companies in the United States, 300 of which manufacture their own products, building for the most part on chassis produced by the major car and truck manufacturers. Others specialize in customizing interiors of RV “shells.”

Some Have Patented Designs

The biggest makers, such as Fleetwood and Winnebago, have patented specialized shell designs, made usually of cast fiber glass, which are bolted onto the chassis.

Top-of-the-line motor homes by these companies can cost between $60,000 and $100,000.

James V. Sheldon, director of marketing for Fleetwood Enterprises Inc., pointed out some ways Fleetwood’s Pace-Arrow models are designed to get the most out of the limited space. Features include “basements” (first introduced by the Vogue Corp. of Sun Valley) under the units to store generators, water and luggage, and hideaway cabinets throughout the vehicle.

Only a few makers design the whole shebang from the chassis up--one of them is Country Coach, owned and operated by Ron and Bob Lee of Junction City, Ore.

The Lees have taken the business of manufacturing to new heights of luxury and technical sophistication. We’re talking RVs appointed with jet-action Jacuzzis here; leather-upholstered, electronically operated recliner chairs; mood lighting, cellular phones, multitune programmable doorbell and hideaway front steps, among other things.

The driver’s seat of their latest model in the Concept series--of which 50 to 60 will be produced next year (on speculation) and which will retail for about $350,000--looks like the cockpit of a widebody jet. Aside from the bewildering array of buttons, switches and lights mounted on an overhead console, there is closed-circuit TV so you can see what’s going on around and behind the coach; the finest Blaupunkt quadraphonic tape and CD system, and a female mechanical voice that goes through an entire operations-check procedure when you turn the ignition.

You can shut it off, of course, simply by flicking a switch. But then, it’s nice to have company on a long journey.

Today through Nov. 13, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, at Dodger Stadium. Admission: adults $5; seniors $3; children 6-12 $2; children 5 and younger free. Information: (714) 532-1688, or (213) 485-0254.