99 Fun Facts About RV

The first known purpose-built RV, the horse-drawn Wanderer, was commissioned in 1884 in which country?

Britain: the Wanderer was built in Bristol for the Scottish author Dr William Gordon Stables, whose first trip took it 1,300 miles from Berkshire to Inverness.

Which club, formed in 1907 for horse-drawn touring, was the world's first RV club?

Caravan Club: regarded as the first of its kind, it grew out of the Gentlemen Gypsy movement, which prized horse-drawn touring as a rest cure; it survives as the Caravan and Motorhome Club.

In which National Lampoon film does Cousin Eddie turn up unannounced in an RV?

Christmas Vacation: Eddie later admits the family has been living in the RV, and his habit of emptying its sewage tank into the storm drain sets up the film's explosive finale.

Which affordable car helped make lightweight camping trailers popular in the US from 1911?

The Ford Model T, cheap enough for ordinary families after 1908, put auto-camping within reach; lightweight folding camp trailers appeared around 1911, helped by better roads and new national parks.

In an RV's plumbing, 'black water' is the waste from which fixture?

The toilet feeds the black-water tank, kept apart from the grey water of sinks and showers so that it can be emptied only at a dump station or sewer hookup.

Which brand, founded in 1931, alone survived among the hundreds of US trailer makers of the 1930s?

Airstream began after Wally Byam built a trailer because his wife refused to sleep on the ground; of the hundreds of firms building trailers in 1936, his alone outlived the Depression.

The rounded aluminium body of Wally Byam's trailers is based on which earlier design?

Byam's 1936 Clipper copied the riveted aluminium shell of the Bowlus Road Chief, designed by aircraft builder William Hawley Bowlus in 1934, moving its front door to the side.

Wally Byam's company builds its aluminium trailers in which Ohio town?

Jackson Center became its base after Byam opened a facility there in 1952; California production ended in 1979, leaving the Ohio village as the brand's only home.

A modified aluminium trailer served NASA as what after the Apollo 11, 12 and 14 missions?

The Mobile Quarantine Facility, a converted trailer, held the crew from the recovery carrier until they reached the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston; Apollo 13 never landed, so needed none.

Winnebago Industries was founded in 1958 in which Iowa town?

Forest City, in Winnebago County, is where John K. Hanson set up the company in 1958; the motorhome plant stayed there after the headquarters moved to Eden Prairie, Minnesota, in 2021.

In 2018 Winnebago expanded into boat building by acquiring which company?

Chris-Craft, the Florida powerboat builder that traces its roots to a skiff made in 1874, was bought by Winnebago in 2018, taking the motorhome maker onto the water; it later added pontoon builder Barletta.

Roughly what share of RVs sold in the US were built in Indiana in the late 2010s?

About 85 percent of RVs sold in the US were built in Indiana in the late 2010s, roughly two-thirds of them in a single county where makers and suppliers cluster.

What do RVers call camping with no water, power or sewer hookups?

Boondocking, or dry camping, means relying on the RV's own tanks and batteries; a night in a store car park counts, as does a stay on open public land.

Which Elkhart-based company owns Jayco, Heartland RV and Wally Byam's aluminium-trailer brand?

Thor Industries is no thunder god: Wade Thompson and Peter Orthwein joined the first letters of their surnames in 1980 when they bought the ailing aluminium-trailer maker.

The GMC Motorhome of 1973 to 1978 was assembled in which Michigan city?

Pontiac, Michigan, home of GMC's Truck and Coach division, turned out 12,921 of the motorhomes, which GM sold as complete vehicles instead of supplying a chassis to RV builders.

What was unusual about the GMC Motorhome's drivetrain?

It was front-wheel drive, borrowing the Oldsmobile Toronado's 455 V8 and transaxle; with no driveshaft underneath, the floor could sit about 14 inches off the road.

A motorhome with its engine mounted at the rear is known as what?

A pusher has its engine at the back, pushing the coach along, and is usually a diesel; front-engined 'pullers' have traditionally run on petrol.

What do larger RVs use to gain living space once parked?

Slide-outs are wall sections that push outward once the RV is parked, widening the living space, then pull back flush with the body for the road.

A fifth-wheel trailer connects to the tow vehicle by way of what?

A kingpin into a horseshoe-shaped plate: the trailer's pin locks into a fifth-wheel plate in the pickup bed, the same coupling that links semi-trailers to their tractor units.

In North America, an RV carried in the bed of a pickup is called a truck camper or what?

A slide-in is lifted into the pickup bed and secured with tie-downs, leaving the truck free to be used alone once the camper is dropped on its jacks at camp.

A pop-up camper is also known by what other name?

A tent trailer, or folding trailer, has soft canvas or vinyl walls that collapse into a low box, so it tows and stores far more easily than a rigid caravan.

Which trailer hides its kitchen under a rear hatch?

Teardrop: named for its shape, it sleeps two inside and cooks outside under the hatch; many were built at home from plans printed in magazines.

KOA, the franchised campground chain founded in 1962, is based in which city?

Billings, Montana, is where Dave Drum opened the first Kampgrounds of America site on the Yellowstone River in 1962 for travellers heading to the Seattle World's Fair; the company stayed headquartered there.

What does the 'MH' stand for in the name of the RV/MH Hall of Fame?

MH is manufactured housing: the hall grew out of a 1972 heritage foundation set up to honour both recreational vehicles and factory-built homes.

Roughly how many Americans lived full-time in RVs in 2018, by the RV industry's own estimate?

One million was the RV Industry Association's estimate; some could not afford ordinary housing, but many said they lived on the road by choice.

In Australia, what is the slang term for a retiree who travels the country in an RV?

Grey nomads are Australian retirees who spend months touring the outback towing a van or driving a motorhome, often heading north for winter along the coasts and the Stuart Highway.

Which desert festival is noted for strict rules on RV water leaks and generator use?

Burning Man, held on Nevada's Black Rock Desert, follows a Leave No Trace principle, so not even waste water from an RV may be left on the dry lake bed.

Slab City, California's off-grid RV community, is named for the concrete slabs left by what?

A World War II military camp: Camp Dunlap's buildings were dismantled by 1956, but the concrete floors stayed, and winter RVers have parked on them ever since.

Which Arizona town of about 2,400 residents (2020 census) swells with RV campers every winter?

Quartzsite, on Interstate 10 near the California line, fills with RVs for its winter gem shows and swap meets, which draw about 1.5 million visitors a year.

Which Lincolnshire, Illinois RV retailer went public in 2016 with a quarter-billion-dollar IPO?

Camping World, then led by Marcus Lemonis of TV's The Profit, raised about $251 million in its October 2016 stock-market debut; it also runs the Good Sam club.

Which German contractor built the classic Volkswagen camper vans that bear its name?

Westfalia-Werke of Rheda-Wiedenbrück, named for its Westphalian home, began converting the Type 2 in 1951 and built Volkswagen's official campers until 2003.

Which comedian stars in RV (2006) as an executive on a motorhome trip to Colorado?

Robin Williams plays Bob Munro, a soda-company executive who drags his family from Los Angeles to Colorado in a rented motorhome to keep his demanding boss happy; Barry Sonnenfeld directed.

Which real-life married couple star as newlyweds in The Long, Long Trailer (1954)?

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, then starring in I Love Lucy, play Tacy and Nicky Collini, who tow a 36-foot trailer through the mountains; Arnaz bet the studio $25,000 the film would be a hit.

In Albert Brooks's Lost in America (1985), the couple decide to drop out of society "like in" which film?

Easy Rider is David's touchstone: he and Linda quit their jobs, sell the house and set off in a Winnebago, only for Linda to lose their savings at roulette in Las Vegas.

In Spaceballs, Lone Starr and Barf fly a Winnebago spaceship with what name?

Eagle 5 is Lone Starr's flying Winnebago, complete with wings; it runs out of fuel and crash-lands on the desert moon of Vega, where Yogurt lives.

Breaking Bad began as a joke about a meth lab in an RV between two out-of-work writers from which show?

The X-Files alumni Gilligan and Thomas Schnauz were both out of work when they joked about driving around cooking meth in an RV; the gag became Walter White's rolling lab.

Aboard the RV in Meet the Fockers, what does the cat do to Moses the dog?

Flushes him down the toilet: Jinx's chase ends in the bathroom of Jack's motorhome, and Bernie has to smash the fitting apart to rescue his dog.

Winnebago Man (2009) covers outtakes of which salesman, dubbed "The Angriest Man in the World"?

Jack Rebney's profane outtakes from a Winnebago sales video passed around on VHS, then YouTube; director Ben Steinbauer hired a private detective and found him in a remote corner of the California mountains.

Which 2020 film about a widow living in her van won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress?

Nomadland, adapted by Chloé Zhao from Jessica Bruder's book, follows its widowed heroine Fern through the West in her van; real nomads, including Bob Wells, play themselves, and Zhao won Best Director.

The #vanlife hashtag, coined by photographer Foster Huntington in 2011, took off on which platform?

Instagram was young when Huntington began posting his camper from the California coast; his tag, a joking play on Tupac's 'thug life' tattoo, went on to label well over a million posts.

Which company, formed in 2010 as Allied Specialty Vehicles, gathered the Fleetwood, Monaco and Holiday Rambler motorhome brands?

REV Group, a Wisconsin maker of fire trucks and ambulances, was built from Fleetwood and three other firms, later bought Monaco and Holiday Rambler, and merged with Terex in 2026.

By 2025, NGOs said the US RV industry had become the country's biggest buyer of which tropical building material?

Lauan plywood, a thin tropical sheet used in RV floors, walls and ceilings, was traced by the NGOs Earthsight and Auriga Nusantara to newly cleared rainforest in Indonesian Borneo.

Which class of motorhome, built like a bus, has the driving seats inside the living space?

Class A motorhomes, called integrated in Europe, have no separate cab; in North America the letters don't run by size, since a Class B camper van is smaller than a Class C.

What title does Elkhart County, Indiana, give itself thanks to its dominant industry?

The RV Capital of the World is Elkhart County's own boast: RV makers and their suppliers cluster so thickly that the trade underpins a county of about 207,000 people.

What feature usually sits above the driving cab on a Class C, or coach-built, motorhome?

A double berth usually fills the overhang above the cab, using every inch of a coach-built body that sits on a van chassis from the likes of Ford or Fiat.

What do Germans call a motorhome?

Wohnmobil, literally 'living-mobile', is the German for motorhome (Reisemobil is a common alternative); a Wohnwagen is a towed trailer, a Reisebus a coach and a Kastenwagen a panel van.

What is the name of the ornate horse-drawn living wagon traditionally used by Romanichal families?

Vardo: families took to these wagons around 1850, and by custom a vardo and its owner's belongings were burned after the owner's death instead of being sold.

Which car maker unveiled the Touring Landau, a 1910 camper with an on-board toilet?

Pierce-Arrow of Buffalo, New York, showed the Touring Landau at the 1910 Madison Square Garden auto show, with a fold-down rear seat bed, a sink and a chamber-pot toilet; 'housecars' followed in the 1920s.

In RV slang, what is a 'toad' or 'dinghy'?

A car towed behind a motorhome: owners of 40-foot coaches bring one because the big rig is too awkward for errands once it is parked and hooked up.

In which Pixar sequel does Forky jump from an RV window during a family road trip?

Toy Story 4 sends Woody leaping after Forky, and Bonnie's toys later use the same RV to drive her family back to the fair.

In the 2006 comedy RV, Bob Munro trades a promised family vacation in which state for a motorhome trip?

Hawaii was the promise, but Bob has to reach a meeting in Boulder in secret, so he rents an RV and tells the family they are touring the Rockies.

Which actor plays Cousin Eddie, who turns up unannounced in an RV in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation?

Randy Quaid's Eddie later admits his family has been forced to live in the RV, and he empties its waste tank into a nearby storm drain.

Which billionaire investor's company bought RV maker Forest River in 2005, bidding a day after hearing its price?

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway made its offer the day after Forest River founder Peter Liegl named his figure of $800 million.

In The Simpsons' first season, Homer buys a dilapidated RV after envying which character's new motor home?

Ned Flanders' new motor home sends Homer to Bob's RV Round-up, where poor credit lands him a wreck that later plunges off a cliff.

John Steinbeck named the truck camper he drove in Travels with Charley after which fictional knight's horse?

Don Quixote's horse Rocinante lent its name to the GMC pickup and custom camper shell that carried Steinbeck and his poodle around America in 1960.

In the late 1970s Winnebago Industries marketed a flying camper converted from which kind of aircraft?

A helicopter became the Winnebago Heli-Home after Orlando Helicopter Airways fitted Sikorsky airframes with a mini-kitchen and beds for four.

Which Hollywood star did Paramount Pictures try to win over with the gift of a 1931 Chevrolet motorhome?

Mae West was offered the Chevrolet Housecar as a bribe to persuade her to make movies, and it survives as an exhibit at the RV/MH Hall of Fame.

RV campers' word 'boondocking' comes from a term for mountain that US soldiers borrowed from which language?

Tagalog 'bundok' means mountain, and American soldiers occupying the Philippines brought it home as 'the boondocks', slang for any remote, wild place.

Which cartoon character lends his name to the Jellystone Park campground chain, founded in Wisconsin in 1969?

Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park Camp-Resorts began with one park in Sturgeon Bay, and every location since has been an independently owned franchise.

Which Bill Murray comedy features the EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle, an armoured personnel carrier disguised as an RV?

Stripes built its EM-50 from a 1970s GMC Motorhome, and the film's heroes drive it into a Soviet base to rescue their platoon.

Which 2013 comedy follows a pot dealer and his fake family smuggling marijuana out of Mexico in an RV?

We're the Millers loads the RV with so much marijuana that a radiator hose breaks, and a family of real vacationers has to tow the smugglers to a repair shop.

Which actor plays the widower who drives a Winnebago Adventurer to his daughter's wedding in About Schmidt?

Jack Nicholson's Schmidt sets off in the motor home he and his wife bought just before her death, hoping to talk his daughter out of the marriage.

Which British actress joins Donald Sutherland as a runaway couple in an old RV in The Leisure Seeker (2017)?

Helen Mirren and Sutherland play Ella and John, who slip away in the faithful family RV to drive from Massachusetts to Ernest Hemingway's house in the Florida Keys.

Which Great American Country reality series follows couples and families shopping for their perfect RV?

Going RV ran from 2014 to 2019, following buyers who wanted to trade walls for wheels as they picked out a new motor home or upgraded an old one.

Which 1971 album features 'Going Mobile', Pete Townshend's ode to life on the road in a mobile home?

Who's Next includes the track without Roger Daltrey: Townshend sings lead himself, and the rest of the band recorded it as a power trio.

In which zombie drama does Dale Horvath's RV become the survivors' camp on the outskirts of Atlanta?

The Walking Dead gave Dale a far shorter life on screen than in the comics, killing him off in the second season.

Which CBS journalist wore out six motor homes while roaming America's back roads for his On the Road reports?

Charles Kuralt avoided the interstates on purpose, taking a small crew down the back roads in search of ordinary Americans and what they were up to.

In which 1970s family film do two psychic orphans hide in a Winnebago motor home owned by a crotchety widower?

Escape to Witch Mountain turns the grumpy Jason O'Day into a believer: hostile at first, he comes to accept the children's powers and the truth of their story.

William Least Heat-Moon toured America's back roads in a van named Ghost Dancing for which travel book?

Blue Highways takes its title from the forgotten rural roads drawn in blue on Rand McNally atlases, which he followed for three months in a van fitted with a bunk and a camping stove.

Which future star of The Hunger Games plays Carl, the Munro family's 12-year-old son, in the 2006 comedy RV?

Josh Hutcherson was cast beside pop singer JoJo, who plays Carl's sharp-tongued older sister Cassie.

Which director, once the Coen brothers' cinematographer, made the 2006 motorhome road comedy RV?

Barry Sonnenfeld, better known for Men in Black, saw the film panned by critics, yet it grossed $87.5 million worldwide against a $50 million budget.

Which club of early motor campers, organised in 1919, is remembered as the first RV club in the United States?

Tin Can Tourists became such a familiar name that the trailer travellers of the 1920s were often called 'tin can tourists' themselves.

KOA began in 1962 when founder Dave Drum saw campers streaming past his land toward which city's World's Fair?

Seattle's fair sent so many travellers past Drum's riverside property that he opened campsites there, the seed of Kampgrounds of America.

Which Fiat van has long been the most common base vehicle for Europe's motorhomes?

Ducato vans also reached North America, where the same design was rebadged as the Ram ProMaster and launched for the 2014 model year.

Ray Frank, credited with coining the word 'motorhome', built his Travco coaches on which carmaker's chassis?

Dodge chassis sat under Frank's first box-shaped motor homes of 1958, and Chrysler later helped market his streamlined design under the Dodge name.

The Wanderlodge luxury motorhome was built in Georgia by Blue Bird, a company best known for which vehicles?

School buses were its starting point: the 1963 original was derived from Blue Bird's All American bus, though every Wanderlodge was finished by hand to the buyer's order.

Fishing Bridge RV Park, which takes only hard-sided vehicles and no tents, lies in which US national park?

Yellowstone keeps tents out of Fishing Bridge's 310 sites because the campground sits in bear habitat, where food odours attract the animals.

Which Pennsylvania town hosts the annual event billed as America's Largest RV Show at its Giant Center arena?

Hershey's show is well past its fiftieth edition, and it fills the Giant Center grounds with well over a thousand RVs from dozens of manufacturers.

In RV slang, what is the name for a car pulled behind a motorhome for use once camp is set up?

A toad, also called a dinghy, is close to a necessity behind coaches of 40 feet or more, which are awkward to steer around a supermarket car park.

In an RV, what is the name for a compact bathroom where the toilet sits inside the shower stall?

A wet bath squeezes washing facilities into the least possible space by making the whole room the shower, while a dry bath keeps the two areas apart.

The 'pink water' that RV owners pump through their plumbing before winter storage is a non-toxic type of what?

Antifreeze for RV pipes is propylene glycol dyed pink to show that it is not toxic, unlike the green or blue ethylene glycol mixture used in engines.

In an RV cab, what do owners call the engine cover that sits between the driver and passenger seats?

The dog house is the hump over a front-mounted engine that reaches back into the cab, and it lifts off so the engine can be serviced from inside.

In an RV's plumbing, which name is given to the waste flushed from the toilet into its own holding tank?

Black water is always emptied first, so that the soapy water from the sinks and shower can follow it down the hose and rinse it out.

An RV campsite advertised as 'full hookup' supplies water, electricity and which third connection?

Sewer completes the trio, a luxury that most campgrounds run by the National Park Service and other federal agencies do not offer.

Which term, borrowed from ships plugged in at a berth, do RV owners use for mains electricity at a campsite?

Shore power at most newer American campgrounds comes from a connection box with three outlets, rated at 20, 30 and 50 amps.

What nickname is given to northerners, many in RVs, who migrate to warm southern states every winter?

Snowbirds return so reliably that whole RV communities in Florida and Arizona appear with the cold season and disappear again afterwards.

Absorption fridges, common in RVs because they can run on propane, typically use which refrigerant?

Ammonia is driven round the system by heat rather than a compressor, so one fridge can run off a gas flame, a battery or a campsite's mains supply.

Dometic, an RV fridge brand launched by a subsidiary of Electrolux, has its headquarters in which country?

Sweden is home to Dometic's head office in Solna, and its fridges descend from a pump-free absorption design devised by two Stockholm students in 1922.

Much of the workforce at Indiana RV maker Jayco comes from which two religious communities?

Amish and Mennonite workers have built Jayco's campers since Lloyd and Bertha Bontrager started the firm in 1968 in two chicken houses and a barn.

Which German city hosts the Caravan Salon, which grew into Europe's largest fair for caravans and motorhomes?

Düsseldorf has staged the fair since 1994, when it outgrew its first home in Essen, where the 1980s motorhome boom had made it Europe's biggest.

Which country kept building the Volkswagen Type 2, the classic camper base, until safety rules ended it in 2013?

Brazil had form: it also went on building the original T1 version until 1975, eight years after German production of that model stopped.

The Volkswagen Type 2 van grew from an idea by importer Ben Pon, who came from which country?

Netherlands-based Pon was at the Wolfsburg factory in 1946 to buy Type 1s when he saw a makeshift parts-mover on the same chassis and realised something better was possible.

Which British campervan conversion, first built on the Bedford CA, became a generic UK word for such vehicles?

Dormobile conversions by Martin Walter of Folkestone soon gained a side-hinged elevating roof with a striped canopy, so that owners could stand up inside.

Adria Mobil, a maker of travel trailers and motorhomes, is based in the town of Novo Mesto in which country?

Slovenia's Adria began in 1965 as part of a Yugoslav vehicle works, and it named its first motorhome, launched in 1982, the Adriatik.

Which US federal agency runs the desert Long Term Visitor Areas where RVs can camp for up to seven months?

The Bureau of Land Management created the areas in 1983 to serve winter visitors while protecting the desert from overuse, and one permit covers mid-September to mid-April.

Which country passed a Freedom Camping Act in 2011 to govern overnight stays in campervans on public land?

New Zealand timed the law to be in force before that year's Rugby World Cup, after complaints that campers were disposing of human waste incorrectly.

Which NFL broadcaster, who refused to fly after a 1979 panic attack, toured America in a custom bus instead?

John Madden rode trains through the mid-1980s, then from 1987 travelled in the Madden Cruiser, a coach Greyhound supplied in exchange for advertising.

Which actor plays Travis Gornicke, father of a family living in its own motorhome, in RV (2006)?

Jeff Daniels plays opposite Kristin Chenoweth as his wife Mary Jo, and the Munros keep running into their good-natured but exhausting clan.

Which built-in RV device turns a campground's AC supply into 12-volt DC power and charges the house batteries?

A converter does the reverse job of an inverter, which turns 12-volt battery power back into AC at normal household voltage.