A new luxury recreational trailer is ready for glamping. Its name is Rivet and it comes from a company called Bowlus that traces its heritage to the 1930s. Priced deep into six digits it offers a bevy of high-end features and some interesting off-road and remote-control capability.
The original Bowlus brand debuted in 1934 as the brainchild of the same visionary man who designed the world-famous Spirit of St.Louis airplane. It ceased operation in 1936 but in 2014, a wealthy couple from Canada bought the trademarks and ultimately, a new line of Bowlus trailers arrived. Today, it’s branching out further from its current two-model lineup to a third, the Rivet.
“The Rivet is Bowlus’ most rugged travel trailer, a total departure from its current product line,” the brand says. In reality, the Rivet looks largely identical to its sibling models the Voterra and the Terra Firma. It has an 8 kWh battery like the Terra Firma and a layout that will be very familiar to current Bowlus owners.
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The big differences seem to be in a few specific areas. Firstly, the Rivet gets a three-inch lift kit and all-terrain tires so that it can go off-road more easily. Secondly, the Rivet also loses some of the storage space found in the other models. Finally, the Rivet is available with up to 660 Watts of solar power which is more than in either of its sister trailers.
It measures 25’3″ whereas the other two trailers measure 27’2”, and it has a GVWR of 3,500 pounds instead of 4,000 for the others in the family. Notably, the Rivet is the only one of the three to feature Bowlus’ new AeroMove technology, which allows the trailer to move, turn, and even parallel park on its own via remote control.
Bowlus says that it’ll even climb “steep slopes” and do 360-degree tank turns. Of course, it’s an additional $10,000 option on top of the $148,500 base price. Interestingly, Bowlus has gone with a tried and true Tesla tactic of releasing the price “after tax credit” instead of the plain old base price itself.
Only after some digging, it’s clear that it actually costs $165,000 before options. Nevertheless, the Rivet appears to be a screaming deal compared to the Terra Firma ($285,000 before options) and the Volterra ($310,000 before options).
Who doesn’t correlate camping in far-flung places with high-end luxury? The Bowlus Rivet is the kind of recreational trailer that even Tom Haverford would approve of.
