modern icons: mohra gavankar and her ultra-retro, kandy-kolored, 1955 road runner
by stephen brookes
photos by michael soluri
If you’ve ever strolled idly along Elba Road, taking in the breezes and daydreaming about this and that, you may have found yourself brought to a screeching halt by the sight of a bright red, 1955 Road Runner mobile home, tucked improbably into a corner of Mohra Gavankar’s garden.
Dazzling? Oh, you bet. A classic icon of the Atomic Age, the Road Runner is drop-dead gorgeous, a kandy-kolored masterpiece of midcentury carchitecture. Newly restored to pristine condition, and painted a shade of red so vibrant it makes your eyes water, the camper conjures up some distant, technicolor landscape from the 1950s, when scads of these things hit the open road in search of the American dream. You can almost see James Dean, beer in hand, stepping out of one to bum a cigarette off you.
But for Gavankar, the Road Runner is the culmination of her own dream — and of a mysterious childhood encounter long ago in India.
“When I was a girl growing up in Delhi,” she says, as we sit in the immaculate but definitely squeezey home, “a huge caravan of Airstream campers arrived one day. I don’t know where they came from or how they got there, but they parked in a circle in this big garden in Delhi — and my imagination just went wild. It was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. I kept thinking: ‘Where did they come from? Where are they going? Who are these people?’
“It was so exciting for me, and I was very young. I wasn't even a teenager then.”
Rhapsody in Red: Mohra Gavankar, Bogart, and the Road Runner
That childhood encounter, with its tantalizing hint of travel, adventure and an exotic world far beyond Delhi, stuck with Gavankar into adulthood.
“It was always at the back of my mind,” she says. “I loved the whole idea of this cute little space, where you could take your family and go stay anywhere — in the woods, close to a river, overlooking the ocean.”
But it wasn’t until decades later that Gavankar, now living in Hollin Hills, decided to pull the trigger. She started hunting around online, mostly finding derelict campers that needed a lot of work. Then she came across a newly-renovated one in Arizona — in that take-no-prisoners shade of red — and promptly fell in love.
“I saw the color, and I said, ‘I want this one!’” she says. The camper was in near-perfect condition, completely reconditioned and repainted from stem to stern, and equipped with a full set of working appliances. She bought it sight unseen, had it brought up on a flat-bed trailer, and installed it at the edge of her patio, where it’s now hooked up with power, gas and running water.
James Dean with trailer, cigarette and itchy nose, 1956
The Road Runner, alas, is no longer road-worthy. But that doesn’t really bother her, Gavankar says. Everything else about it works fine, and she uses the camper as as a playhouse for her grandson, as a bar when she holds backyard parties, or just as an extremely midcentury objet d’art. “I look at it,” she says with a grin, “and I just feel happy.”
Besides — it’s not even clear that the camper would be all that much fun to travel in, anyway. “Were people just … smaller back then?” she wonders, gazing around the nanoscopic interior.
But its diminutive size is part of its charm, and the cuteness factor inside is completely off the charts. There’s a tiny red fridge, a tiny red coffeemaker, a tiny red stove and a tiny red toaster-oven. There’s even a tiny red version of the camper for her tiny Yorkshire Terrier, Bogart — who, you will not be surprised to learn, is sporting a tiny red sweater.
So the beautiful Road Runner, having come to the end of its own long journey, is now at rest, admired and fussed over in its dotage. But for Gavankar, the lure of the open road — inspired by that magical caravan in Delhi so many years ago — is still very much alive. For it turns out that this charming and elegant femme d’un certain âge is actually renting a camper in August, hitting the highway … and going to the Burning Man Festival!
Well — why are we even surprised? When someone keeps a bright red 1955 Road Runner in their back yard just for the sheer crazy joy of it, you know they’re young at heart, and will never stop chasing their dreams. We should probably be ready for … just about anything from her.
— Stephen Brookes
The interior: it’s a little tight