Two things surprised us when we ran the Buick motorhome photos that Wally Hirsch sent us recently: That we hadn’t seen photos of this totally unique land yacht anywhere before, and that nobody immediately chimed in with additional photos. After all, this is exactly the kind of beast that Internet hipsters love to bash and that ends up in those ceaseless email forward chains.
But our readers deliver. Specifically, Doug Schaefer and his dad Fred, who spotted the motorhome and snapped some pictures of it in Northeast Ohio a year after the previous photos were taken. Fred sent along the photos and wrote:
Attached are two pictures I took in 1977 when we camped at a campground around Conneaut, OH, east of Cleveland. We were on our way home from a barbershop harmony convention in Philadelphia. This vehicle was there and, being car nuts, we had to check it out. It appears to be made of 2-3 1962 Buick station wagons! Since it was so long ago, the details beyond that have since been forgotten.
Some new details we can pick out: We see some sort of name across the front of the topmost section, though we can’t quite make it out (Shaw Rock Away?). We see the sun glinting off more portholes behind each set of front wheels. And the center windows appear to have grown in size.
Thanks, Doug and Fred. We’ll get to the bottom of this story eventually!