The Bowlus Heritage Edition Camper Is Nicer Than Your House And Probably Cheaper

It’s rare that you can pair “art piece” and “recreational vehicle” into the same sentence, but there are a few camper manufacturers that somehow do it. Bowlus is one of them. The company is known for building fantastic aluminum trailers that are far more luxurious and cost more than your house. The company has unveiled the Bowlus Heritage Edition camper, and not only is it a nod to Bowlus’ past, the still-nicer-than-your-house camper is actually somewhat affordable!

Something that can be really disappointing about the RV world is that nice campers often have prices straight into the stratosphere. I’ve stepped into Prevost coaches that cost more than a nice home in many states. There are towables with prices that would make a rare hypercar blush. The modern incarnation of Bowlus has also largely catered to the high-luxury end of the market with its $285,000 Terra Firma and, recently, the $310,000 Volterra. Both of those trailers look fabulous in any setting and come loaded with tech. Now, with the Bowlus Heritage Edition, you get great looks and a more authentic nod to history for a far lower price.

If you don’t know Bowlus, you might see this trailer as a sort of offshoot of an Airstream. You would technically be close because Bowlus and Airstream have a similar origin story. I’ll explain.

Bowlus Came First

The original Bowlus trailer was created 89 years ago by William Hawley Bowlus. Back then, Bowlus was a pilot and aircraft engineer with an impressive resume. He is most famous in the aviation world for his role as Superintendent of Construction for the building of Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis. Bowlus’ mark in aviation wasn’t limited to that aircraft, as he was enthusiastic about gliders. As the USA Soaring Team explains, while the concept of a glider has been around since Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of a sort of glider in 1490, gliding as a sport took off in the 1920s in Germany. Enthusiasts couldn’t build powered aircraft in Germany after World War I, so they turned to gliders. This reportedly caught Bowlus’ attention, and he worked to bring soaring to America.

Bowlus was renowned for his experience in soaring and in building gliders; he was inducted into the Soaring Hall of Fame in 1954. Along the way, Bowlus also constructed a type of trailer that remains popular today.

Prior to building the first Road Chief in 1934, Bowlus built trailers for aviation purposes. His gliders needed to be towed to launch sites, so trailers were built for that. Those transport trailers were built similarly to how Bowlus built gliders: aerodynamic and lightweight.

Bowlus discovered that he had another problem, and it was where ground crews would sleep at the launch site. At first, they slept in tents set up at the site that would get blown down by wind. Bowlus would later get the idea to put a tent inside of the glider transport trailer, but his wife reportedly wasn’t fond of the idea of sleeping in a tent in a trailer. So, Bowlus tossed that idea in the trash and eventually came up with what would become the Bowlus Road Chief. Yep, Bowlus’ campers originally weren’t meant to be homes on wheels for families, but a place for crews to stay at landing strips.

Bowlus built 80 Road Chief trailers between 1934 and 1936, with a highlight of their design being the fact that they weren’t just inspired by aircraft design, but actually built like a plane. These trailers featured riveted aircraft aluminum alloy supported with stringers. And like Bowlus’ gliders, they were built to be as lightweight as possible. Bowlus was also an inspiration for Wally Byam, who went on to create Airstream’s famous trailers.

The New Bowlus

Unfortunately, as I said before, Bowlus built just 80 of them (of which 40 are known to survive today) before honing back in on his love of aviation. Later, he would even help Bill Lear create the Lear Jet. Byam’s Airstream would go on to be the aluminum campers everyone knows and loves. That changed when in 2011, then Wharton Business School student Geneva Long saw the future of the RV as being fully electric and pulled by an EV. She teamed up with some engineers and designers to take the Bowlus design and reinvent it for the modern day. Long was inspired by finding a 1935 Bowlus Road Chief in a field and restoring it with her parents.

Long’s reincarnation of Bowlus launched in 2013 and these new ones look like, and are built like, the trailers of old, but that’s where the similarities end. A new Bowlus is built with a TIG welded aluminum spaceframe featuring 2024-T3 aluminum and about 5,000 rivets spaced one inch apart. The interiors also tend to be lavish and inspired by yachts.

The Heritage Edition

Last week, Bowlus unveiled its newest model, the Heritage Edition. This camper pays tribute to the original 1934 Road Chief. It eschews the mirror finish of Bowlus’ other trailers for a satin “mill finish” exterior, and the interior is still luxurious while looking like its 1930s inspiration. If you don’t like the look, Bowlus will also wrap the camper in matte black or grey. I dig the look and the camper almost looks ripped out of the 1930s, but it gets even better.

Inside, the Heritage Edition dials back a bit on the luxury that you’d find in Bowlus’ more expensive models. However, not only is it still very nice in there, but this interior is a great throwback to the trailer that inspired it.

Starting from the rear, you get a bedroom that’s designed to be like a hotel room. There’s a king-size bed in there, drapes, and a nightstand. Bowlus says that it accepts custom orders so that the bedroom can be just how you want it.

Moving forward, the camper’s bathroom is attached to the bedroom and it features a bathroom that is also modeled after hotel accommodations. There’s a sizable shower, a stainless steel sink, composite floors, a cassette toilet, and more. A sort of trick feature of the bathroom is that the shower head extends outside of the trailer so you can wash off inside and outside.

Forward from there is the combination living room and dining room, which double as extra sleeping areas. And finally, the galley kitchen, which nets you a two-burner gas cooktop, composite countertops, a 12V refrigerator, and a microwave.

Holding your liquids are a 19-gallon fresh water tank, 21 gallons for grey water, and the cassette toilet holds 4.5 gallons of waste. You do get an air-conditioner, a propane furnace, and a 2-kWh lithium iron phosphate battery.

All of this adds up to a 27-foot camper that weighs just 2,900 pounds. Bowlus calls this the lightest full-size camper in production. While I haven’t been able to confirm this claim, it is extremely light for its size. A 27-foot-long travel trailer often weighs in at around 6,000 pounds, so the weight advantage here is real.

Bowlus sells options geared towards making the Heritage Edition more off-grid-friendly, too. You can get packages that increase the house battery up to 6 kWh, allow you to monitor the trailer’s power remotely, add wiring for solar panels, and more. Bowlus says that, with the 6 kWh battery, you could run the camper’s air-conditioning for eight hours straight off-grid. Of course, solar panels can extend that. You can also get a cellular booster, a 5G router, Starlink hookups, and a rear camera.

Bowlus is taking orders for the Heritage Edition right now for a base price of $159,000. Yes, that’s still a ton of money for a camper, but it’s actually the cheapest way to get a Bowlus this century. It’s also cheaper than a number of the smaller, less feature-packed vans that I’ve seen out there. Plus, just look at it.

(All images from Bowlus unless otherwise noted.)

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