Identifying a manufacture

[Brenda Cornett]

Does the paint or the placing of it on the outside of the camper signify
a manafacture. For example my 13 in 69 yellowstone has three stripes and I just saw a vintage Scotty where the paint color is solid only at the top but it looked alot like mine?!?!

[redwing]

no there is no real paint scheme to rv's, you might even find they were cheap and just used a stripe roller or even maybe a roll of sticky tape on it, on one i had was painted on another it was sticky tape. from the same company.   redwing

 

[Mark Sobyak]

Yes, in many cases it does with the old RVs but, it really depends on the manufacturer, the yer, the model, etc.  Some just made their RVs very generic.  Others, like Winnebagos, definitely had signature striping, decals and colors for their models.  Travco, Unger & Barth had similar methods with the body paint colors as well as Coachmen, etc.  Winnebago started off making Travel Trailers and truck slide-ins and are a good example.

Here's an early, 1960's Travel Trailer from Winnebago.  Although it was repainted, the owner followed the original stripe pattern which was standard on this year's models

The problem is, without model documentation for yours, like original sales brochures, it's difficult to tell if the paint/striping on one of these old RVs is original, based on the original, or totally changed.

[redwing]

1960 model winnie used 23 different paint schemes, the only identifying mark was the big w in the front as can be seen on this 1960 model below and had only two stripes on most of them, the 1960 travco's only had the one stripe down the middle and usually the same color top and bottom they had 3 colors, barth trailers had a double color theme and had a wide painted middle ususally white and three colors brown, yellow and beige, with a big v on the front of them.

 

travco never changed their color schemes even tho other manufacturers did as their colors were in the fiberglass they used that was a selling point for them old frank motorhomes and only had six colors for almost 8 years the center stripe was a sticky tape and came in 4 colors of stripes, red being the most popular with a white body, in the 70's earth tones were all that was available and still they used sticky tape stripes, in the 70's also they added a van style with aluminum sides and various colors since it could be painted, barth changed many of theirs over the years using both paint and sticky tape for stripes but never more than two. winnie's in 1965 added three stripes "plus" moved the 'w' to the side in 66, the one you showed is missing the original w up front as i found it where more pictures of it were posted. 64 had it on the front, as did the other up till 1969, when winnie stopped making them, all winnies that are motorhomes have them on the side with a big w. and some had two some had three stripes, some had the one stripe and a whole section down the upper portion that was colored, some winnies had a seperate strip in the very lower portion of the motorhome depending on how big they were. from 1970 winnies had a color chart that was only used by them and no others at all, and has been that way till today. before 1970, your on your own as far as colors go for winnies, as they were not consistant .

 

trivia:charles  kuralt on his "on the road" crew traveled in a travco motorhome from 1967-1994, for the cbs evening news.

 

http://www.travco.org/

 

http://www.winnebagoind.com/resources/manuals/pdfs/1970-1996_Paint_...

 

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/umu7J70gMbcvlW-Cq9j5kjD_QHkVi...

[Mark Sobyak]

Yup, I knew all this too so thank you for giving a good, in-depth, example of what I was saying; there were identifiable schemes, colors, stripes etc. which were used by some manufacturers as well as copied by others and some which just looked generic.  So, you can identify some by the body color, scheme, decals, stripes pretty easily,... others can be very difficult.

[Brenda Cornett]

i HAVE A 13 FT 69 YELLOWSTONE AND IT HAS THREE STRIPES

[Mark Sobyak]

As you can see, yours has 3 stripes, the Winnebago pictured above does too and you mentioned a Scotty that looks "a lot" like yours as well.  One additional thing, in your travels on the road and on the internet, you'll also find that striping & color schemes of the major manufacturers were often closely copied by smaller RV companies.

[redwing]

and it may not be original stripes for a yellowstone either. as you can see in the broshure the other url points to a 69 both are the same scheme.

http://cowgirlcommentaries.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html

http://www.vendio.com/stores/vintage_rvs/item/advertising-1960-69/1...