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Modern Mechanix.pdf

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In 1935, Austrian-born designer Alexius Pribil designed a teardrop-shaped house car while he was president of the Saginaw Stamping and Tool Company in Saginaw, Michigan. A prototype of the vehicle, dubbed the Aircar, was constructed in early 1937 with the assistance of racecar driver, Ray Harroun, also an employee of the company. In September 1937, the editors of Modern Mechanix featured the Aircar, now christened the Trailmobile, on the cover, albeit with some artistic license. The article’s author speculated that house cars like the Trailmobile could soon replace travel trailers since the tidy rolling homes eliminated problems associated with trailers, such as the maintenance of extra axels and tires, faulty hitches, and poor acceleration capacity. Other problems included poor rear visibility, which made parking difficult. The author went on to suggest that some of the advantages of this self-propelled unit were that the heat from the exhaust pipes could be used for cooking and that a home craftsman could convert a touring car into a Trailmobile-like vehicle for a few hundred dollars, far less than the cost of buying a trailer. Around the same time the article appeared in Modern Mechanix, Pribil, with a desire to formally manufacture his invention, founded the Pribil Safety Aircar Company, but his death in 1938 put an end to those plans. Courtesy Ray Bystrom collection.