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Originally Posted by gbaglo
May have had some Trillium influence, but early Escape was based on Surfside ( photo below ), according to fellow I met who worked at Escape early in its existence.
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Yes, the original Escape 17' was a Surfside stretched and improved, but the Triple-E Surfside was in turn based on the Trillium 4500 (the 14 foot variant of the original 13 foot Trillium 1300).
Quote:
Originally Posted by gbaglo
The Outback is one of the Trillium offspring. I'm not sure how much variation you can have in an egg.
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One of the features of moulded fiberglass construction is that you can take a mould off of a trailer (without any access to the original moulds, or even any documentation), and you can modify the shape of a trailer then make a new mould from it as many times as you want. This, combined with the tenuous nature of trailer-building companies, leads to many variations. While some brands are just duplicates of something earlier, there are size differences (in both length and width), and detail changes such as the bulges in the bottom of an Escape (which helps drain water and probably stiffens the body), the belly seam detail, wheel wells (the Trillium 5500 could accommodate tandem axles), and now of course the vertical sides of the current Escapes replacing the sloped sides of all other variants.
Trillium was the origin of a substantial family of trailers. The other big family started with Boler, and includes both Scamp and Casita.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gbaglo
At one point ( 2010? ) ETI had an agreement with a 'Trillium' company to build a basic 'Trillium' trailer. Reace was unhappy with the condition of the moulds when they arrived at ETI and the relationship ended.
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The venture to build for TrilliumRV (who wanted "1500" and "4500" models) was announced in September 2008, for production starting early 2009. Although the arrangement with TrilliumRV ended in July 2009, Escape went ahead with their own 15-foot model based on the 17-foot; Reace had posted in another forum in September 2009 that the 15-foot mould was almost ready and the first one came out of the factory in 2010 model. Given the timing of other new moulds, my guess is that this 15' mould was started before the deal ended. With the same moulds to be used for both brands, any mould provided by TrilliumRV would not be usable, since it would no have any of the Surfside or Escape improvements.
Escape built 13' models from the same moulds to be used for the TrilliumRV 1300 models; the differences were to be in the interior. The Escape 15' mould was built by Escape after the deal with Trillium RV ended, so that mould wasn't from TrilliumRV; if mould quality was the only concern, the deal could have continued. This was one incarnation of Tom Young's seemingly never-ending series of Trillium companies, which have left a trailer of Trillium-family trailer models.