Science Alive! Episode 5: Fleet Cabin Car Trailer
Dave Schellenberg and Emily Gann with the Fleet CabinCar
What does an airplane manufacturer do when World War II ends? They have lost huge government contracts - but know that Canada is turning to thoughts of a more peaceful time. If you are Fleet - you have a plan to turn your airplane factories into camping trailer factories. In our current podcast and video at techno-science.ca - we check out the Fleet CabinCar made in 1947 - a low-priced, lightweight, roomy cabin trailer that looked amazing. It was a teardrop design - streamlined with room inside for two people to sleep - but not stand up - as well as storage space for clothing and everything else.
Transcript
00:14
world war two ends companies that used
00:17
to make airplanes need a new project
00:19
how about camping trailers checking out
00:22
the fleet cabin car in this edition of
00:24
science a lot and I'm with Emily Gann
00:28
she's an assistant curator here at the
00:29
Museum hello Emily hi so what are we
00:31
standing in front of so we're in front
00:33
of here a 1947 fleet cabin car and
00:37
what's special about the fleet cabin car
00:40
well this one's special for a number of
00:42
reasons
00:43
so fleet used to manufacture aircraft
00:47
and after the war the Second World War
00:50
it bridged over into the civilian market
00:52
okay and started match manufacturing
00:55
trailers because the war ended nobody
00:57
needed their aircraft anymore yeah so
00:59
well I mean the demand for aircraft
01:02
wasn't as high fleet had a large staff
01:04
with lots of skill so it decided to
01:06
transfer that skill into making the
01:09
cabin car and when you look at it there
01:11
is kind of a aircraft look to it yeah
01:14
you can sort of envision this being
01:16
almost like a wing right and made of
01:18
wood yes so tear drops which is what
01:21
this trailer is designed to look like
01:23
right made use of sort of like the four
01:26
by eight piece of plywood was really
01:28
lightweight it was marketed as being
01:30
really roomy inside and then it sold for
01:34
a third of the price of comparable
01:35
trailers in the late 40s so you talked
01:37
about being roomy inside you still
01:39
couldn't stand up in it no and I think
01:41
someone like your height would probably
01:43
be really uncomfortable whereas someone
01:45
my height would you know sort of day at
01:46
the spa so I think you just find it cozy
01:50
yeah I mean yeah so it has room lots of
01:53
room for storage it was sort of
01:55
multi-purpose we've got ads showing
01:57
people sort of sitting up and reading or
01:59
knitting and then also to people laying
02:01
in the bed right so you you could sort
02:03
of live in the space and also sleep in
02:06
the space cool and how many of these did
02:08
they make so fleet thought that they
02:11
would have the market for about fifty
02:13
thousand of these and at one point they
02:15
were turning out about twenty a day Wow
02:17
yeah but the big bar that they hoped for
02:20
didn't have the financial backing to do
02:22
the buying that they had hoped for and
02:24
fleet had invested so much that they
02:27
sort of had to stop
02:27
action right away right now this one is
02:30
the four hundred and seventy-seventh we
02:31
have that on a cereal plate and the
02:34
donor who who gave this to the museum
02:36
actually wasn't able to find any that
02:38
were in this good of a condition Wow
02:40
yeah and made of wood outdoors a lot
02:43
yeah so there's that sort of conundrum
02:45
that something that's made of wood in
02:47
the rain or even on the roads isn't
02:50
going to really withstand that sort of
02:52
environment yeah
02:53
I read something that said it had to be
02:55
lacquered every year so that's a lot of
02:57
time and can be quite a family project
02:59
yeah so that was sort of one of the big
03:02
the big downfalls another was that in
03:03
the 1950s you saw this boom and big
03:06
trailers so a small teardrop trailer
03:08
really wasn't what people were looking
03:10
for
03:11
now the teardrop design is is it stuck
03:14
in the 40s and 50s are we ever gonna see
03:16
this again yeah luckily we're actually
03:18
seeing a resurgence of teardrops so
03:20
those same factors that made it really
03:22
marketable in the 40s that it was easy
03:24
to maintain lightweight that's what
03:27
people are looking for today in some of
03:28
their trailers absolutely Emily again is
03:30
this a curator here at the Museum thank
03:32
you for telling us about the flip car
03:33
thank you very much
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