Design Concept: POP/CLASSIC

When we were shopping for a trailer we often were tempted by basic pop-up tent trailers because of a couple of features. A couple of things that we liked are easy to tow and easy to load boats onto. Also even though the footprint is similar in size to small travel trailers like our Shasta, they seem smaller when not in use plus you can store the boats on them. Personally I could look at our Shasta all day long but I've heard folks say that they like pop-up's because they don't block their view when parked in their driveway and are less noticeable when stored in the yard. We did run into a few Hi-Low trailers that are hard-sided as opposed to canvas but all the models that I saw didn't have much style, especially when compared to a vintage trailer. Recently I've seen that there are a some vintage Hi-Low's and we know another Shasta owner who has this super rare 1962 Compak Keuka which is really cool, but it's pretty hard to find a hard-sided trailer with the pop-up feature that has any style to it.

So kicking all this around a bit I worked up this Pop/Classic design concept. It has obvious overall form inspiration from trailers like our Shasta Airflyte but is also mashed up with the pop-up or Hi-Low feature. The forms are pretty simple and I think could be achieved in plywood using some boatbuilding and teardrop trailer building techniques. Perhaps if you started with the guts of a pop-up you could use both it's frame and lift mechanism. I really haven't thought much about how to seal the gap between the top and bottom from the elements, but with the glass mounted inboard it's definitely one of the larger engineering challenges...