Travco Wikipedia part 2

History

In 1964, Travco Corporation (contraction of Travelers Company) took control, the windows were enlarged and various other cosmetic modifications were added. The mid-1960s Travco was offered in six colour combinations. The design changed very little from 1964 to 1980 except for a choice of grille designs that hurt the look of the well-designed RV. Four sizes were offered; the 21-foot 210, the 27-foot 270, the 29-foot 290, and the 32-foot 320. Out of the four, the 270 was the best seller, and the best selling color in the 1960s was white with a red band running lengthwise around the center. The popular colors in the 1970s were any shade of earth tone with or without a two-tone. Eventually, the "Atomic Age" design failed to impress most buyers, despite the more modern-looking grille introduced in the mid-1970s. As part of the Loan Guarantees to the Chrysler Corporation during its financial crisis in the late 1970s, Chrysler was told to abandon the medium duty truck market (including Dodge Motorhome Chassis) and concentrate on building light trucks- International Harvester was told to do the reverse, and get out of light trucks and concentrate on medium and heavy duty vehicles as part of their agreement with the US Federal government. This stopped production of both the very popular Dodge chassis, the 440ci big-block V8, and contributed to the demise of the Travco, which was identified strongly with the Chrysler Corporation. Other factors, including management changes and extraordinarily high fuel costs and interest rates in the 1979-era contributed to Travco's difficulties. However, the body shells were used by a luxury-RV maker called Foretravel until around 1990. The Travco body-shell molds have probably been destroyed, so no more replacement body parts will be made.
In a side note, Travco also offered van conversions called "Family Wagons" as well as class C Minihomes called "Family Wagon", with aluminum sides similar to Winniebago's "Minnie winnie" and a fiberglass version call "L'sprit"
Travco motorhomes, regarded as among the very best in the industry in contemporary reports and now considered a classic RV on par with Airstream, Avion, Silver Streak, Sportscoach and Spartan, were owned by both the famous and ordinary families. The country music star Johnny Cash owned and toured in several Travcos (many of which are included in documentaries and films about him) over the course of his career; William Shatner of 'Star Trek' had a specially customized 1979 Travco with four wheel drive. Travco was considered a leader in the industry, and was the first manufacturer to create a vehicle that defined the modern day Motorhome. Almost every feature regarded as typical of the class A motorhome originated with Travco and its Dodge Motor Home/Frank motorhome predecessors, from central air conditioning, to self contained electricity generation, to a toilet ("Destroilet") that incinerated its own waste.
In a recent survey of all time highest quality and desirable makes of RV on the RV.net website, Travco models were in the top three postwar RV manufacturers. Even within the Travco company, their product was affectionately referred to as 'the tank'- a reflection of its toughness and stout lifetime construction.