Friday, Aug. 30, 2002 | 3 a.m.
LABOR DAY EDITION: Sept. 2, 2002
A space that would seem confining for most people is Las Vegas resident Carol Taylor's ticket to freedom.
That's because her brand-new 36-foot recreational vehicle will take the wheelchair-bound Taylor to destinations she previously thought unreachable. In a space smaller than most studio apartments, her "third home" contains all the comforts of a regular home -- a stove, side-by-side refrigerator, reclining sofa and home entertainment center complete with VCR and DVD player.
Taylor and her husband, Ron, took delivery of the vehicle last month.
Carol Taylor, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, has been confined to a wheelchair for 24 years and has been unable to use her hands since the late 1980s.
The handicap has forced the former hairdresser to curtail traveling, one of her favorite activities. She has found that many hotels that call themselves handicap accessible are often anything but.
However, her new RV will fix all that, thanks to a hydraulic lift similar to an elevator that lifts her into her new "coach."
"Traveling is different now," she said from the inside her white, purple and green Winnebago Horizon. "This makes it so much easier."
The lift was part of a custom job done for the Taylors at Winnebago's Iowa factory, said Marlene Wheeler, co-owner and chief operating officer of Wheeler's RV, the Las Vegas dealership where the couple bought the vehicle.
Much like an elevator, the lift consists of a platform that carries Carol safely into the RV, where she can then roll safely onto the Spanish tile floor in the kitchen. It operates by a remote control.
This lift is a huge improvement over the couple's previous motor home, which was fitted with an aftermarket lift that was less stable, Ron Taylor said.
"It was nothing compared to this one," he said.
The sheer size of what is known as the "Rolls-Royce" of motor homes makes it easier for Carol to maneuver her wheelchair, something the couple asked for when having the RV custom built, she said.
That maneuverability will come in handy. The Taylors plan to hit the road in their new wheels within a couple weeks.
They already have their first trip planned -- a short junket to Arizona "to get used to it," Carol said.
"From there, wherever it decides to go we'll go with it," her husband said.
Future trips include one to the ocean -- although they didn't specify which one -- and one to visit their grandchildren on the East Coast.
"He won't let us drive to Maui," Carol Taylor joked.
But for the couple, this motor home is more than just another car, it is another home, adding to the two they already own -- one in Las Vegas, the other in Pahrump.
They plan to sell one of their homes but keep the other as a "home base," said Ron Taylor, a semi-retired real estate broker.
At almost $200,000, their newest "home" costs more than the average house in the Las Vegas area.
However, since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 made many Americans skittish about flying, the number of those investing in RVs has increased significantly, Wheeler said.
In the past few months the dealership reports a 20 percent increase in sales of the vehicles, she said.
"I think since Sept. 11, people want to get out and see the homeland," Wheeler said.
And an increasing number of those people are handicapped, she said, as Winnebago and other manufacturers incorporate increasingly sophisticated lifts into their RVs. For those individuals, seeing the country through the windshield of a motor home is often the best choice, she said.
The biggest challenge is marketing to the handicapped population, Wheeler said.
"This way, people don't have to wonder what's out there," she said.
While the complexity of a lift apparatus can vary significantly, Wheeler estimates that a conversion similar to Taylor's adds about another $20,000 to the bottom line, money well spent if you ask her.
"I'm overwhelmed, I had no idea," Carol Taylor said after seeing it for the first time. "The pictures don't do it justice."
However, until she took delivery, pictures were all she had to go on because the dealership did not have a handicap-accessible model on the lot.
But now that they have it, the Taylors are so happy with their Winnebago that they are filming a promotional video for the dealership, helping to get the word out to handicapped individuals who might be interested in the "RV lifestyle."
Wheeler RV has three handicap-accessible motor homes on order to use as demonstrator models, Wheeler said.
Now that they have their diesel home on wheels, they can take their life on the road, Ron Taylor said. He even plans on running his business part-time from the RV and towing their handicap accessible minivan behind the coach.
"This way we can literally take everything with us," he said. "We'll have to squeeze work in."
And for this couple that rarely spends time apart, trading the sterile environment of many hotels for the coziness of an RV is a welcome change and allows them to spend more time together, Carol said.
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