Spectacular Vintage 1950 Spartan Aircraft Royal Mansion Trailer For Sale!

March 27, 2014

Spectacular Vintage 1950 Spartan Aircraft Royal Mansion Trailer For Sale!

By Sara In AZ

Trailers….do we ever LOVE trailers around here at No Pattern Required! I happened to be searching Craigslist for something completely unrelated the other day when I just stumbled upon this fabulously awesome trailer! I KNEW I had to share it with you all!

’50 Spartan Aircraft Royal Mansion

From the listing:

Make: Spartan Aircraft
Model: Royal Mansion
Build Year: 1950
Configuration: Great Room, Full size Kitchen, Breakfast nook, 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom
Interior Size: 264 livable square feet
Length: 31 Ft (cab) 33 Ft (overall)
Origin/Port of call: Hollywood California (recently relocated to Arizona)

For your consideration, this fully updated, Atomic-era mid-century home reflects modern taste with its unadorned style and polished aluminum exterior. Warm and inviting wood paneled interior throughout. Elegant curved wood interior displays a very high level of craftsmanship. This coupled with highly polished aluminum and acrylic, gives the home a machine era feel and modernity. The highly functional minimalism layout is readily apparent to even the casual observer. As your enter the threshold, you realize how this open floor plan feels spacious and easy to navigate.

The Spartan all aluminum exterior Aircraft was the basis of inspiration for the Spartan Mansion line. The famous Spartan Model 7W aircraft was the apex of high performance airplanes at that time. It was the most expensive, extremely fast and on of the most elegantly appointed aircraft produced from 1936-1950. This same aeronautical genius was applied in the concept and building techniques of the lightweight Royal Mansion. Like its aeronautical predecessor, it was designed and built for durability and trouble-free performance. This one is still 100% functional and will cater to all of ones needs on and off the grid.

This unit was built during the last months of 1950 during the subtle changes and retooling from the ’50 to ’51 models. This is one of very few original Spartan’s in immaculate condition located in the United States. It obtains the highly rare road-side front bay window, two rear quarter rolling windows, forward slating nose, elegantly down curved tail-end and nearly perfect exterior and interior. This beauty will easily become the envy of all Spartan Aficionado’s who lay eyes. The great ones quickly disappear from the US. Most are purchased and shipped to collectors of rare American icons.

The renovation of the trailer was done only to update the systems and safety of the trailer. Even though this was the most modern trailer produced in 1950, it needed to be brought up to more modern travel trailer codes. The exterior aluminum body, the sub frame, all the distressed interior birch wood and interior trim, cabinetry and appliances are all 100% original from 1950. We worked very hard to keep it original so that it’s unique 50’s style and feel would show through and it does!

The interior has all its factory original birch wood from floor to ceiling. It still obtains the original brass fittings in the rear windows, skylight fittings, door way fittings, brass sink in the kitchen and brass reading light in the rear bedroom area.

Bath and shower are currently in a “wet bath” configuration. This can easily be changed to a divided shower/bathroom configuration. All the fresh, black and gray water lines have been replaced with modern pipe materials. The wall electrical receptacles have all been updated as well. We added two 6 gallon hot water heaters that act as one large 12 gallon water heater for extended shower time.

The base sub flooring has all been removed and replaced from the metal up to the new wood floor and it is rock solid. We installed a beautiful light wood flooring throughout. Between the sub-floor and the wood floor we added a high-tech weather barrier that will reflect heat and cooling to retard temperature fluctuations. The under carriage was renovated by exposing the metal channels via DA sanding, secondly it was chemically stripped and finally POR-15 was applied to the bare metal to prevent future oxidation and a lifetime of protection.

All windows are original with the exception to the three Plexiglas windows in front, these have been replaced with new modern plexi-glass material and new rubber gaskets. Several windows on the side have been upgraded at the factory to the three way split windows for increased ventilation. In addition to this, the trailer obtains a huge front bay window that is not a standard upgrade. We do know that it is period correct so it was not added or installed by the owner. We have been made aware that some dealers would provide upgrades to customers Spartans upon their requests. These were factory authorized and professionally installed upgrades but they were done so at the dealership. To our knowledge this is the only 1950 Royal Mansion with a street side bay window upgrade.

Spartan Aircraft travel trailers obtain the thickest gauge aluminum ever used in a production travel trailer. Only the highest and purest grade aluminum was used and this type of aluminum is usually reserved for aircraft use only. We recently commissioned a company based in Southern California that is very well known in the Spartan community to professionally polish the exterior. At roughly 350+ man hours of polishing, 6+ cuts to expose the beautifully reflective aluminum material. Lastly it was carefully polished by a four man team using an orbital tool to work the metal into a mirror like reflective sheen. We paid $500 per square foot (you do the math) for this polishing process and the results are breath taking.

Oh boy y’all….fingers crossed I win the lottery this week!!!