Aristocrat question

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
T

The Cultured Wall

Member
Joined
Aug 14, 2022
Posts
12
Location
Tucson Az
9D6D1E7C-7ADF-434D-A8B9-E6479D3A6542.jpeg
Hello, I am new to the forum. We bought this Aristocrat trailer. The seller told us it is a 1969 Aristocrat Land Commander but I can’t find anything anywhere to confirm that. To me it doesn’t look like any of the land commanders I’ve seen. The box is 14 feet. About 16 feet to the hitch. Can anyone help Identify it?
 
20180427_064035.jpg


This is me and my dad by our Aristocrat Land Commander in about '64 or maybe '65.
Your TT looks more like the Lo-Liner that we had before we got the Land Commander. Unfortunately, no pics of our Lo-Liner survived.
I think there's another relatively new member on here that had a Lo-Liner at one point, so he might chip in.
 
Welcome to The RV Forum! That's a nice looking trailer! A Google search on "Aristocrat trailer history" will turn up several articles and resources, including a Facebook group. Most of the articles are based on research done by the Tin Can Tourists group that collects and documents old RVs.

They were made in Morgan Hill, CA and in his autobiography Trailer Life Magazine publisher Art Rouse said he was resentful that Aristocrat became very successful without ever buying a lick of advertising in his magazine.

My family purchased an Aristocrat Land Liner trailer back in the late '60s. A couple of years later one of our trips took us from San Francisco to Disneyland, passing through Morgan Hill along the way. An individual in a Ford station wagon flagged us down and introduced himself as Irv Perch, Aristocrat's owner and president. He said he wasn't happy with the way the sidewall looked on our trailer (there was a small cosmetic defect where two of the slats overlapped) and asked if we'd follow him to the factory and let them fix it. My dad declined, saying we were going to Disneyland and didn't want to interrupt our vacation. Mr. Perch insisted and suggested we have lunch in his restaurant on him and the trailer would be ready when we got back.

We agreed, and followed him to the factory. He had us drop the trailer not at the customer service building but outside the assembly line. He went inside and returned with two workers, pointed to our trailer and in no uncertain terms told them to "make it right".

We had a nice lunch and when we returned the trailer was fixed and looking like new.
 
Old_Crow said:
View attachment 156615


This is me and my dad by our Aristocrat Land Commander in about '64 or maybe '65.
Your TT looks more like the Lo-Liner that we had before we got the Land Commander. Unfortunately, no pics of our Lo-Liner survived.
I think there's another relatively new member on here that had a Lo-Liner at one point, so he might chip in.
Click to expand...
Thank you. Yeah there is an angular feature both in the front and the rear. That is a great picture. Thanks for sending it.
 
The mid point belt line was introduced in the late 60s. Before that the angles on the front and rear looked like Old Crow's trailer. On second look your trailer looks like a Land Liner or Main Liner. The Land Commander was larger and had the rear door like Old Crow's picture. The Land Liner had the kitchen in the middle with a couch across the front, the dinette in the right rear and a toilet compartment with a smaller window in the left rear corner. The Main Liner was slightly smaller and had a couch across the back end instead of the toilet compartment.
 
Lou Schneider said:
The mid point belt line was introduced in the late 60s. Before that the angles on the front and rear looked like Old Crow's trailer.
Click to expand...
Lou Schneider said:
The mid point belt line was introduced in the late 60s. Before that the angles on the front and rear looked like Old Crow's trailer. On second look your trailer looks like a Land Liner or Main Liner. The Land Commander was larger and had the rear door like Old Crow's picture. The Land Liner had the kitchen in the middle with a couch across the front, the dinette in the right rear and a toilet compartment with a smaller window in the left rear corner. The Main Liner was slightly smaller and had a couch across the back end instead of the toilet compartment.
Click to expand...
Thank you Lou Schneider, any land liner pictures I’ve seen have two axels where ours is a single.
 
You're right - I just Googled some pictures and the Mainliner and Land Commander were the smaller single axle trailers and the Land Liner was the larger two axle rig. So much for 50 year old memories.

Does yours have the "You're Following an Aristocrat" logo in the back? It was on a plastic plaque under the rear window.
 
Lou Schneider said:
Welcome to The RV Forum! That's a nice looking trailer! A Google search on "Aristocrat trailer history" will turn up several articles and resources, including a Facebook group. Most of the articles are based on research done by the Tin Can Tourists group that collects and documents old RVs.

They were made in Morgan Hill, CA and in his autobiography Trailer Life Magazine publisher Art Rouse said he was resentful that Aristocrat became very successful without ever buying a lick of advertising in his magazine.

My family purchased an Aristocrat Land Liner trailer back in the late '60s. A couple of years later one of our trips took us from San Francisco to Disneyland, passing through Morgan Hill along the way. An individual in a Ford station wagon flagged us down and introduced himself as Irv Perch, Aristocrat's owner and president. He said he wasn't happy with the way the sidewall looked on our trailer (there was a small cosmetic defect where two of the slats overlapped) and asked if we'd follow him to the factory and let them fix it. My dad declined, saying we were going to Disneyland and didn't want to interrupt our vacation. Mr. Perch insisted and suggested we have lunch in his restaurant on him and the trailer would be ready when we got back.

We agreed, and followed him to the factory. He had us drop the trailer not at the customer service building but outside the assembly line. He went inside and returned with two workers, pointed to our trailer and in no uncertain terms told them to "make it right".

We had a nice lunch and when we returned the trailer was fixed and looking like new.
Click to expand...
This is such a great story. Thank you so much for sharing it.
 
The Cultured Wall said:
And you described the interior to a T. Kitchen in the middle, dinette/bunk up front, couch/bunk in the rear and a fold
down bunk above that couch. No bathroom
Click to expand...
Ah, no bathroom! Pretty sure that makes it a Lo-Liner. Our Land Commander had a tiny bathroom right inside the rear entrance door which was actually the reason for the upgrade. I do remember that even back then I could hardly fit in it and mostly used campground facilities when available.

That couch across the back was called a gaucho back then. The upper bunk was also not comfortable for a growing boy, but it beat sleeping on the ground.

Lou, when we (my dad and I) bought our Lo-Liner (and a couple of years later when we traded for the Land Commander), we were living in Los Gatos. We picked up both units at the factory in Morgan Hill, and I know that we met Mr. Perch on a couple of occasions when we had returned to the factory for some service work. He seemed quite interested in the Toyota Land Cruiser that we used to pull with.

We also belonged to a chapter of the Aristocrat Caravaners. This was a group of families who went places on a monthly basis and camped together. Common weekend destinations included Bass Lake, Bethal Island, The Pinnacles, and Yosemite. In fact, the day I got my learners permit, we left for a weekend trip to Yosemite. As we walked out to the rig, my dad tossed me the keys and said it was time for me to learn to pull a trailer.

I can actually remember when the first family in the club traded their L-C for a Land-Liner. That dual axle rig looked giant compared to all the sub-twenty footers that everyone else had. After a few years, my dad upgraded to a 24' Boles Aero. As a result, the chapter of the Caravaners we belonged to changed their by-laws to allow other trailers besides Aristocrats.

A few years later, say early to mid 80's or so, dad and my stepmom downgraded (IMHO) from the Boles to a small Komfort 5th wheel. They took their last trip in that rig in '94, with my dad at the age of 85. They traveled from Sonora, CA to somewhere in New Jersey for my stepmom's college reunion and on the way back stopped to see my family and I shortly after we moved to Arkansas.

Sorry for the book. The more I typed, the more I remembered.
 
Old_Crow said:
Ah, no bathroom! Pretty sure that makes it a Lo-Liner. Our Land Commander had a tiny bathroom right inside the rear entrance door which was actually the reason for the upgrade. I do remember that even back then I could hardly fit in it and mostly used campground facilities when available.

That couch across the back was called a gaucho back then. The upper bunk was also not comfortable for a growing boy, but it beat sleeping

Lou, when we (my dad and I) bought our Lo-Liner (and a couple of years later when we traded for the Land Commander), we were living in Los Gatos. We picked up both units at the factory in Morgan Hill, and I know that we met Mr. Perch on a couple of occasions when we had returned to the factory for some service work. He seemed quite interested in the Toyota Land Cruiser that we used to pull with.

We also belonged to a chapter of the Aristocrat Caravaners. This was a group of families who went places on a monthly basis and camped together. Common weekend destinations included Bass Lake, Bethal Island, The Pinnacles, and Yosemite. In fact, the day I got my learners permit, we left for a weekend trip to Yosemite. As we walked out to the rig, my dad tossed me the keys and said it was time for me to learn to pull a trailer.

I can actually remember when the first family in the club traded their L-C for a Land-Liner. That dual axle rig looked giant compared to all the sub-twenty footers that everyone else had. After a few years, my dad upgraded to a 24' Boles Aero. As a result, the chapter of the Caravaners we belonged to changed their by-laws to allow other trailers besides Aristocrats.

A few years later, say early to mid 80's or so, dad and my stepmom downgraded (IMHO) from the Boles to a small Komfort 5th wheel. They took their last trip in that rig in '94, with my dad at the age of 85. They traveled from Sonora, CA to somewhere in New Jersey for my stepmom's college reunion and on the way back stopped to see my family and I shortly after we moved to Arkansas.

Sorry for the book. The more I typed, the more I remembered.
Click to expand...
We lived in San Rafael and for 3 years we rented a Mainliner trailer from a dealer in Greenbrae for the Easter week school vacation. My mom was a clean freak and would spend several hours cleaning the interior of the rental before she'd let us move into it. The dealer said our rentals came back cleaner than when they went out and after the first year he gave us the newest trailer in his rental fleet.

After about 3 years she tired of the annual clean-ups and my parents decided to purchase their own trailer and chose the Land Commander for the toilet compartment. It had the center door like the OP's picture and came with a fixed mount recirculating toilet where you had to add a blue chemical like what's used in airplane toilets to mask the stench of the recirculated effluent used to flush it.

One oddity is none of the smaller Aristocrat trailer had water heaters or holding tanks. The kitchen sink drained directly to a port on the outside wall, if you were camping without hookups you either ran a short hose into a bucket to catch the runoff or let it drain onto the ground. I think the larger trailers with a shower had holding tanks and a water heater.

The Mainliner had the same floorplan and dimensions as the Lo-Liner (center door and kitchen and a fold out couch across the rear) except it lacked the drop axle and it's house was the same height as the other Aristocrat trailers. The Lo-Liner had exactly 6 ft of interior headroom and that didn't fit my 6'1" father.
 
Lou Schneider said:
The Lo-Liner had exactly 6 ft of interior headroom and that didn't fit my 6'1" father.
Click to expand...
That was another reason we upgraded to the Land Commander, but as you can see by the pic I posted, it was more of a problem for me than for my dad.

The first "rv" that my wife and I ever had was a '72 Scotty Hi-Lander. It had just about the same floor plan as the Lo Liner. We ended up with my wife sleeping on the dinette up front and I slept on the Gaucho bed in the back. We only kept that rig about 2 years and only used it about twice a year. Once we traded that for the '89 Sportscoach Class A, we started camping way more often.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Members online

Total: 1,071 (members: 11, guests: 1,060)

Forum statistics

Threads
131,972
Posts
1,388,446
Members
137,721
Latest member
Dmac3003
Back
Top Bottom