Company history
Winnebago was founded in 1954 in Forest City, Iowa, and spent its first decade building travel trailers before moving into self-propelled coaches. The company name comes from Winnebago County, the Iowa county the plant sits in, not from the company's own naming logic of products.
For decades the brand's position was that of a mainstream manufacturer rather than a luxury one: durable, serviceable coaches sold through a wide dealer network, with engines and chassis sourced from external suppliers rather than built in-house. That model is still the basis of the range.
The company entered the towable market directly in 2019 with the purchase of the fifth-wheel and travel-trailer maker Grand Design, which had itself only been founded in 2012. The two lines now run side by side under the same corporate ownership but keep separate model naming.
In practice, a Winnebago today can be a Class B campervan on a RAM or Mercedes chassis, a Class C coach, or a large Class A motorhome; the range is unusual in covering that whole span from one manufacturer.