When the Cummins was turbocharged in the ‘90s, travel trailer towing saw a new world open up: reasonable fuel economy & potentially longer vehicle life. And the fuel was cheaper.
That all lasts up until about 2007.
Would a new gasser be nice? Sure. But better-built & designed travel trailers are where it’s at. The tow vehicles are leaps and bounds ahead of a typical 1997 trailer as to needed changes from that point in time.
The trailer you can pass on to your children after a quarter-century of use
and doesn’t need 400hp to get down the road makes a lot more sense than caring about pickups in oilfield or mining camp use.
Still, there wasn’t anything like watching the vacuum gauge & tach to perfectly time the 3-2 downshift and listen to the ThermoQuads gigantic secondaries come on strong, the 440-3 still pulling up Wolf Creek as the Fords & Chevys waited for the wreckers to get them over the top.
Or, make it a steam locomotive or air-cooled radial. Some things we created were alive. The carbureted big blocks were the last of that.
Who cares what’s under the hood any more except that it is appropriate to the job, and affordable to run. It’s slave to computers, not man. A bean counters world, regulated by electricity.
The sound & sight of a 318 Jimmy, stacks afire, stair-stepping a mountain grade was part of the adventure, once. He had to know what he was doing, no less than the pilot or rail engineer.
Man & machine. A dance. Or, song. You choose. (“ . . it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing, . . . . “)
No less impressive than Nature was a man’s determination to get himself and others to a new place.
I miss that. More than I can say.
.
1990 35' SILVER STREAK Sterling, 9k GVWR
2004 DODGE RAM 2WD 305/555 ISB, QC SRW LB NV-5600, 9k GVWR
Hensley Arrow; 11-cpm solo, 17-cpm towing fuel cost
