1959

The owner of this DeVille had owned it since the 60’s and brought it to us for a new facelift. It was in exceptional original condition but was showing signs of water leaks and he wanted to prevent them from getting worse... a smart move.  It still had the original paint still on it, we could even make out the DeVille decal on the front.

Sure enough, once we pulled the skin it did have considerable amount of water rot to the structural framing... the pile to the left was parts that literally fell off as we took it apart.  No problem for Retro, we rebuilt all the wood structure and only had to replace a couple of interior panels, and of course we added new insulation before new skin matching the original pattern.

The finished trailer!  We matched the original colors and scheme on the outside.  We only had to do some fresh shellac on the interior wood to match the new panels, the rest of the interior was amazing for its age.  That is the factory original seat covers, table/counter tops and the floor was almost perfect!  The owner had really taken care of it over the years.

We did add one of our AC units.  We shortened the closet door a bit and built a structure above it to support a household AC unit.  These have to be installed correctly to work, the venting of these units when mounted inside like this is critical for safety and to function well.  It’s not a simple matter of bolting it to a shelf and cutting a hole to vent it outside!

The finishing touch to any of our restorations... new logos.

A note about DeVille trailers built by the Catolac Corporation:  In the 50’s and 60’s DeVilles were expensive compared to many other brands, about double of the cost of a similar sized Shasta for example.  The reason was their quality of construction, the cabinetry is beautiful and overall care in construction throughout is apparent.  We highly recommend a DeVille for a vintage camper restoration.

I’m also a little partial to DeVilles for a personal reason... My first shop was actually part of the DeVille dealership in Albuquerque in the late 50’s & 60’s.  This DeVille actually came back to the place it was purchased new in 1959, something I just find cool.

How “Catolac” Corporation got away with the “DeVille” name still amazes me...