>So, enlighten me, folks. Who made the Argosy?

As has been said Airstream produced the Argosy. I am not sure why but  several reasons have been heard. Airstream had a lot of aluminum panels that had blemishes and could not be used thus building a rig and painting it seemed wise, they also wanted more of the market and hoped a lower priced unit would help. The Argosy did not have a lot of the features of the airstream. Window were single pane, couches were gouchos as opposed to comfortable couches in the A/S, they used steel end caps on
both ends of trailer which I suspect made for less manpower to assemble, things like tank gauges were not included and lastly I think they trained in new employees at the Argosy plants. I have noted on the three Argosy's I have owned some poor workmanship in certain areas, particularly around interior windows and around wheel wells.

Interestingly however is the the mid and late '70 Argosy's featured the large wrap around front windows that are now common to the current a/s models. My '78 unit has the large wrap arounds at both front and back. Other then that the construction techniques were identical to the silver bullet models and parts are/were all interchangeable. The single pane has proven its value as we know the double pane has a lot of discloration and leaking problems as models age. The front steel cap, IMO, looks nicer and of course is much easier and cheaper to repair. The contruction of the "classic" style Argosy stopped in '79 or '80. A few years later ('86) then came out with a box style argosy, also of aluminum and similar in color, for three years and then stopped. The then took the same model, repainted or finished it in grey or blue colors fiberglass and called it a Land Yacht. The stopped
producing this in '91. Go to Airstream Central and the link to Don Reason's history which cover Argosy well. I had a '77, 20ft Minuet (single axle, a '76, 24ft (dbl axle) and current '78, 30ft, twin beds, ctr bath.

Interestingly the Argosy Motor home was the first MH A/S produced (mid '70's) and I think the Argosy was the experimental model and they had all kinds of sizes from about 20ft on. Those little ones are kind of cute but you don't see a lot of them. A/S discontinued the Argosy MH once the
A/S Classic MH was established.