Baker County Tourism/Flickr Creative Commons
As I mentioned in an earlier blog, we’re 105 years into this whole RV’ing thing, so, today I thought I’d write about how some of this stuff we enjoy now came to be. First there came the car, then the next logical step was a car owner thinking, “How can I make this thing suitable for camping?” Well, in 1910, the Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Company presented the first ever purpose-built RV they called the Touring Landau. Those early automobiles were named after differing styles of high-end horse drawn carriages; coupe, sedan, cabriolet, brougham, limousine, phaeton, etc might be words familiar to classic car enthusiasts as well as people with only a passing interest in automobiles. This was pre-Henry Ford “a car in every driveway” thinking, this was at the very beginning when owning an automobile was thought to be exclusively for the upper classes. Pierce-Arrow calling their RV a Touring Landau is a perfect example since a landau was a very high-end carriage. Think of the times you’ve seen the Queen of England riding in a horse-drawn carriage on TV, well she was riding in a landau. Better yet, a landau is what Cinderella’s fairy godmother turns the pumpkin into, pretty fancy eh?
But back to Pierce-Arrow for a moment, Pierce-Arrow was a top-of-the-line manufacturer based in Buffalo, New York, and they were highly enough thought of that when the White House switched from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles, President Taft ordered two Pierce-Arrow gas powered automobiles (McKinley had the first presidential car, a Stanley Steamer which was steam powered). So when a manufacturer with that sort of up-scale reputation decides to delve into the recreational vehicle/camping market the automotive world took notice!
That first 1910 Touring Landau featured such novelties/necessities as a water tank, chamber pot style toilet, wash basin, trunks, roof rack and side boxes for storage, hot and cold running water, a folding bed, AS WELL AS a telephone for communicating with the chauffeur! My how times have changed. Back in those days you would have needed to contact Pierce Arrow by telegraph to have them mail you a parts catalog, then order your parts by mail, and await rail delivery. Well today all you have to do is type www.pplmotorhomes.com into your browser and we’ll deliver those parts and accessories straight to your door!