By George Rackus original owner #342 UltraSounder 2001-3

Like many who acquired Peterson’s Motor Home I too made a second scan of something I saw a block away on the side street driving down the main drag in North Hollyowod to my boat slipped in the Long Beach Marina. This Motor Home was something different, and when I spotted the size 13 inch wheels I knew what it was. Working at Lockheed #89 as a flight line crew chief, I knew I was looking at an all aluminum, handmade, Motorhome with those small wheels and the wide track. Parked in front of the Chevy dealer – Peterson stopped to get some Chevy parts.

The Motor Home was surrounded by people and there was lots of talk. Peterson was handing out a sheet of typewritten information that showed a price of $4700. He had just put it on the road and drove it here to show his daughter living in my town. With all the people milling around the car it took me awhile to get to Peterson to ask a few questions about this most unusual car. I learned he was located in Oakland and it was to be hand made there. He particularly Showed me the storage cabinets. I later found out he started out as a cabinet maker. At that time of 1961 the Chevy Corvair engine he was using was 80 horse power was puzzling. Anyone would have guessed a big Motor Home like that would need a V8 to climb a hill. Peterson’s aircraft talk “Horsepower to weight ratio” was unheard of to the general public.

I already have gone the route of putting an interior myself in a VW van to make a camper which was short on head room for a six foot, three height. What I saw looked very ideal to me. I had just put all of my available funds into my sailboat, so thoughts of a Motor Home had to be shelved.

About a year later we made yearly visits to Seattle and stopped by the tin building in the industrial area of Oakland to see Peterson. With the help of a couple of friends and his wife doing the stitching of making the upholstery work they made a few Ultras. At that time he only had a few components in process she was working on. During our talks he kept rubbing the front suspension casting he was holding to show his pride and joy. I still could not think of being able to buy a complete unit but asked if it would be possible to buy his castings and some components to be able to build the Ultra in my back yard. I had made a few things in my shop in the rear of the garage and thought with a few of my aircraft friends riveting I would be able to do the difficult job. Th, strongest structure for its weight is a box. Peterson showed me in the components each wheel is housed in an aluminum box. Then all the boxes are tied together in the shell of the structured skin of the car body. Making the whole unit flexible, At Lockheed we were the first to build a wing structure and then seal the interior to make a leak proof tank to contain the fuel. previously a tank was made and installed in the wing bays,. In the early Ultras Peterson made a riveted box which he sealed to make four structural tanks that were tied into the hull. This made a much lighter replacement of the automobile chassis of that time.

After an early struggle of a few years and building a few Ultras, Peterson realized it would be necessary to turn over the production job to some going organization to produce the Ultra in a larger scale.

It took several attempts to turn over the production job to someone else that could make a successful job of producing an Ultra. in a subsequent visit to the Oakland facility I found Peterson dejected and learned that the one completed Ultra there was one of the unsuccessful Units that were built by Prescolite that took on the job of producing the Ultras. They built a few not knowing aluminum construction methods substituted aluminum with angle iron which then caused major cracks where the iron was mated with the aluminum skin. This caused the shutdown of their Ultra production… Peterson told me the unhappy owners of this Ultra looked up Peterson to see if he could help him replace the goofed up failed parts of the Prescolite failed blunder. Peterson agreed to let the unhappy owner use his facility to make the necessary repairs using aluminum materials. Peterson said the angle iron used was causing the cracks because the aluminum gives and flexes. At the time Peterson had said that he would consider selling the castings and some components to me. After the debockle he had with Prescolite he said the Ultra would have to be built by aircraft knowledgeable people.

Some time later I happened to be in conversation with my college classmate, Dick Werth who was vice president of Pacific Airmotive in Burbank where they did aircraft repair and made production parts for a helicopter. At that time their main operation was a conversion of the Convair transport of replacing the reciprocating engine with the Allison turboprop. Peterson contacted Dick with hope that Pacific Airmotive would take on the job of producing the Ultra. Dick Looking over Peterson’s Ultra he reluctantly told Peterson that he would assign one person and give him one hour to quote a figure of what it would take for them to build an Ultra to aircraft standards. Three hours later and with two more people assigned, Dick told Peterson they could build his coach for his cost of $25,000 per unit… This was more than a shock to Peterson.

Some time went by and the word of Peterson’s Ultra was known of at the Lockheed plant and they knew I was interested in that Motor Home. Much to my surprise one of my fellow workers showed me a well done brochure shoing the Ultra Motorhome being built in Hutchinson Kansas. After seven years of ownership of my boat I sold it  and sent a $250 deposit to have an Ultra built for me. I made a visit to see the beautiful wooden, former Navy, wartime, hanger where the Ultra was being built. They had 78 people on the payroll and the average pay was $2.78 per hour at the time. The Ultra was priced at $8900.00 I had 18 years of enjoyable ownership.