BACKWARD GLANCES
Mingled DNA: A Streamline trailer
mated to a Jeep Forward Control
Y
OU HAVE PROBABLY SEEN (OR SEEN PICTURES
of) Jeeps that were professionally con-
verted into campers or motorhomes.
We’d be willing to bet that you haven’t
seen any quite as bizarre as this one. Let’s
travel back in time to around 1963-1964 and
see what a West Coast RV manufacturer might
have cooked up as an experiment. The exact
timeframe and details of this are lost to time,
and the principals have long since passed on,
but enough clues were left to piece together a
rough picture.
The Streamline Trailer Company of El
Monte, California, had been in business since
64 SEPTEMBER 2019 FOUR WHEELER fourwheeler.com
Feature
<|The Streamline Jeep in all its glory. Typical of many
RVs, the workmanship is a mix of the excellent and
the poor, so it’s hard to confirm or reject it as a “pro-
totype” based on that. Where the cab meets the trail-
er looks very professional. The way the Jeep chassis
meets the trailer is kinda so-so—but it’s survived 55
years, so how bad could it be? At some point in time,
the original 226ci flathead six was replaced by a
Buick 300ci V-8 adapted to the original three-speed
transmission and Dana 20 transfer case. Locked into
four-wheel drive, it pulls off the front axle only, and
that’s a lot of work for a Dana 44 front, especially
with a 300ci V-8 supplying about 330 lb-ft of torque.