FOREST CITY, IOWA — In the realm of conspicuous consumption, few things are larger than the RV, the multi-ton vehicular brontosaurus that has taken generations of families on the great American highway adventure.
But in the worst economic crisis since the Depression, the RV is facing perhaps its gravest challenge as sales have plummeted, manufacturers have filed for bankruptcy or gone out of business, and lofty expectations of a grander profile for recreational vehicles have been drastically cut.
Even the most pessimistic economy watchers will acknowledge that someday people will begin buying cars again, only because they have to. That assumption, though, does not apply to RVs, which are not essential purchases, can easily cost a quarter of a million dollars and are relentless binge drinkers of fuel.
"This is the worst it's ever been," said Robert Olson, chairman and chief executive of Forest City-based Winnebago Industries Inc., the market leader and the brand synonymous with RVs. "But you always have to look at a silver lining. . . . I think the industry will come back.
"It's a culture. It's a lifestyle. It's a maker of memories," Olson added.
Or as John K. Hanson, the 1950s-era founder of Winnebago, said a long time ago, "You can't take sex, booze and weekends away from the American people." The immediate question is whether RVs are to be forever linked to that less economically sensitive weekend goal.
Better days for the RV clearly are a memory. Production peaked in 2006 at 390,500 vehicles. Last year it slumped to 237,000, according to the Recreation Vehicle Industry Assn., creating a glut on dealership lots and a raft of clearance sales.
Manufacturing employment in the industry has been cut by 50%, clobbering the economy in the Indiana counties of Elkhart and LaGrange, where 60% of all RVs are built. Production projections for this year are only 130,000 vehicles, about the sales level of 1980.
Two of the bigger and more established manufacturers -- Monaco Coach Corp. of Coburn, Ore., and Fleetwood Enterprises Inc. of Riverside -- this month filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and smaller producers have folded.
In the northern Iowa town of Forest City, where Winnebago Industries produced its first RV half a century ago, half of the company's workforce has been laid off, and an assembly plant in nearby Charles City has been shuttered.
