The Alfa Fifth Wheel front end-cap. Interesting Design.

ALFA Fifth Wheel with a front cap shade.

The park in Portland has been very interesting in terms of this blog.  This park is more than 400 spaces and is situated in a city large enough to get a lot of pass-through traffic.  There are people who live here year-round, and many in our section that stay for just one night.  I get to see a lot of Rigs.

While biking through the park when we first got here, I saw a couple Alfa Trailers (there are many), and some that had propped open front ends.  There are quite a number of Alfa's running around these parts, both Trailers and Motorhomes.  Even though they went out of business in 2008, it is clear that a lot of people still love their Alfa See-Ya's.

Picture of the bedroom, the black
windows are the ones seen under
 the cap.  The closet is in the
R/S slideout.

The thing that I found interesting about them was their front nose-cone design.  I haven't done any research into the design itself, but I have to think it was inspired by all those older travel trailers that have the front lid over the windows to the front.  I rode around the park tonight and counted dozens of that type of travel trailer.  Alfa just seems to have taken it further, on a bigger Rig and a grander scale.  As you can see from the photos in the post, the entire front cap pivots up, revealing large, shaded bedroom windows.  Maybe because I have a trailer with a differently-designed nose I find them fun and different.  Someday I'll have to run into one of the Alfa owners and ask them about what they think of that design, and how well it really works.

Some background (from an Alfa brochure):

ALFA, (A Loving Family Affair) was founded in 1973 by Johnnie Crean, with the help of his father John Crean, the founder of Fleetwood Enterprises. Since 1973, Johnnie built over 20,000 RV’s.  Apparently, what he learned from his apprenticeship with his father suited him very well. I guess that it didn’t hurt that he’d grown up around RV’s, as did his father before him. We design and build RV’s according to a lifetime of experience, so that your family will have a lifetime of precious memories.
Timeline:

• Sept. 1993 ALFA introduced the first "SEE YA" model 5th wheel.
• 2001: Motor homes given the 'SEE YA' name
• May 2004 all ALFA RV's became the 'SEE YA' models.
• April 30, 2008: Alfa Leisure, Inc. closed it's doors.

Front Cap Closed.  The struts run along the bottom edge,
back to the bulkhead.

Another Alfa with that front shade.

Side view of the same Rig.

The Cool: I hadn't seen anything like this before, and I really like the idea of having a simple-to-setup, hard-coated shade for my bedroom windows.  It is different than anyone else out there (I'm sure a patent), and I like the uniqueness of it.

The Interesting:  Since Alfa is out of business, why didn't anyone come in and buy up the patent?  Again, without speaking to an Alfa owner (and I'll update this all when I do), I don't know how well it works, but since the two fulltimers here both have them open all the time, I have to think they work at least reasonably well.