Friday, January 23, 2009

Wally's 1955 Bubble






This past Wednesday, I had the unique opportunity to photograph's Wally Byam's Bubble. Now I know if you're not an avid follower of vintage Airstreams, this may sound kinda strange, so bear with me.
A little history on this gem is in order here. Wally had the Airstream factory in Jackson Center, Ohio build this trailer to his exact specifications and had it shipped overseas to Europe. The Bubble was to be used by Wally and his wife Stella to scout out a course for the upcoming WBCCI European caravan. I'm a bit sketchy on its whereabouts after its European trip but I hear it went to Canada for some time. It ended up on Ebay where a gentleman from southern CA bought it. He had full intentions to return it to its glory days when it was in use by Wally but as things do, it just wasn't going to work out for him. It then went to auction where a gentleman from England named Sam bought her. This is where I come in. The auction took place here in Phoenix this past weekend and I found out about her after the auction took place. I contacted the auction company and asked if I could take pictures of it. In the end, I had a window of opportunity of around 30 minutes to look this glorious trailer over and snap some pictures. Here are some exterior shots.

You may wonder how the ghost images of the regional names of the destination the trailer has visited can be older than the trailer itself. Wally took the liberty to have these destinations painted on the trailer as the places he had visited outside of the US and not the trailer itself.

2 comments:

Max said...

Hello, you must be Brad from the Forum. I am the former owner, Robert Cole, and I am from San Francisco and not southern California. Also, I did not purchase the Bubble from eBay. It was never listed on eBay to my knowledge.

Thank you for going out of your way to take pictures and provide history on this little gem. I will miss owning her. My wife Julia and our kids were calling her Stella. Sam, the new owner might do the same. In any case we will be keeping an eye on the Bubble to see what Sam does with her and we wish him well.

Cheers,

Rob

Brad Norgaard said...

Nice of you to post Rob. Seems my story isn't quite accurate about this trailer's history. Thanks for clearing some of it up. Might you have any pictures you could share of her earlier years? What modifications did you do to her, if any?

Brad