Maybe it's because I'm punchy. It's been a trying day, 10 hours on the road. The babies got carsick in the mountains, and one threw up rather spectacularly. After arriving at Yosemite's Upper Pines campsite, I had to back the 26-foot Airstream trailer into a tight space between trees, in the dark, a nerve-racking man audition with a gathering audience of seasoned and skeptical RVers shouting advice: "Cut the wheels to the left. . . . The other left!"

But now the day is done. Roz and Viv (my 10-month-old twins) are finally asleep in the trailer and my wife, Tina, with them. I'm sitting at a picnic table in the sumptuous, high-corniced night of Yosemite Valley, drinking coffee, looking at the Airstream. Just looking.

The orange lick and leap of the campfire light pours off the polished aluminum skin like lava. The Airstream hovers; it glows. Why, Miss Watson, I never noticed before, but with your glasses off, you're beautiful!

As I said, I'm punchy.

I've never been much interested in the recreational-vehicle lifestyle. You call this camping? Please. But I've always wanted an Airstream. Billed as the world's oldest recreational-vehicle company - born in Los Angeles in 1932 but now in Jackson Center, Ohio - Airstream has had the rare good sense to keep its classic design classic. The riveted aluminum capsules of today are, aesthetically at least, not much different from the silvery streamliners of more than half a century ago.

An Airstream is a shiny telegraph from midcentury America, an object that reflects our grandparents' restless, road-hungry energy. One Airstream - a 1960 Bambi model - made it all the way to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. So when the company asked whether I'd like to borrow one of its trailers for a week, it felt like being asked whether I wanted to borrow the 20th Century Limited or the Chrysler Building. Oh, yeah.

The fire's dying out now. Man, that sure is a pretty trailer.

The road ahead is rocky for America's RV industry. Shipments are off by 17 percent for the first half of 2008 compared with the same period last year, and sales of the big class-A motor coaches are off more than 50 percent. It doesn't help that gas and diesel are so expensive and that a big motor coach gets around 6 miles per gallon.

There are other factors too: As it has with the housing market, the tightening of credit is suffocating sales. Also, the decline in home values has shut off the flow of equity-rich RV buyers.

Airstream has been partly insulated from these forces. For one thing, the products are designer-label expensive - two to three times more costly per foot than comparable trailers - so they play to a more affluent demographic. For another, the Airstream's retro-Modernist style attracts buyers who would not otherwise consider an RV.

"People will buy an Airstream because it's different, and they think they are different," says Rich Luhr, editor of the enthusiast magazine Airstream Life. "They tend to be more artistic, a lot of teachers, a lot of small-business owners and entrepreneurs. They're more design-oriented. They look at a white-box RV and say, 'Ugh, I can't be seen in that.' "

In the last decade, Airstream has focused on high-swank interiors and co-branding ventures with such companies as Design Within Reach and Quicksilver. The 26-footer we're borrowing is a "Christopher C. Deam" edition. Deam, a San Francisco architect, loved Airstreams but hated their "grandmother's kitchen" interiors. He took it upon himself to redesign the interior in a cool Scandinavian style. The company liked it so much, it hired him.

"All of these products have lowered our average age of buyer dramatically," company chief executive Bob Wheeler said.

In what would have likely struck the company's founder - the highly eccentric caravaner Wally Byam - as a very odd turn of events, Airstream has become a hip luxury brand. Matthew McConaughey hip, Sean Penn hip, Dr. McDreamy hip.

Shining bright

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