Sleeper Car, Bryce Canyon, Utah, 1958
This is SO Popular Mechanics!
We’ve all slept *in* a car but have you ever slept *over* a car?
The smart, sci-fi style upstairs auto addition is called the “Aero Cabana.” We only know that because the photographer wrote it on the slide. Such a great name! It’s a fancy ’50s way of explaining exactly what it is – a clamp-on, airplane-wingette with a pop-up travel tent tucked inside.
This clever camping contraption isn’t clamped on just any ‘ol car, oh, no! This is a brand new, but dusty, 1958 Edsel Citation. The top of the entirely new, but ill-fated, line of cars introduced in 1957 by the granddaddy of American automobiles, the Ford Motor Company.
Just think – you could have a sleepover in your sleep over!
Here’s to the Edsel, the Aero Cabana and YOU!
Charles Phoenix
Los Angeles, CA
January 26, 2011
More pix here – looks like an outgrowth of the “jet age” and probably easy to make
http://books.google.com/books?id=RJtJRxMWr8gC&lpg=PA116&ots=JXOIti1OGC&dq=aero%20cabana&pg=PA116#v=onepage&q=aero%20cabana&f=false
It looks like an alien is trying to mate with an Edsel.
I love that the western background scenery is still the same in many places! It is somehow comforting that the red rocks are still covered with juniper and that two-lane roads still take you to those places.
The Aero Cabana was the neatest pop-up camper that you built yourself!