Offroad,4X4, 8X8

A class

C liner design 2008

How the motorhome changed gear and drove up cool street
By Emma Smith of The Sunday Times

Even caravanners once derided them. But now rock stars are climbing aboard

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Jay Kay is delighted with his new £60,000 Knaus C-Liner JULIAN HAYR

Across the Atlantic motorhomes have long enjoyed an adventurous rock’n’roll image. Giant RVs or Winnebagos (even the names sound cool) bring to mind heady summer road trips across rugged country and the unrestricted freedom of a wide-open highway.
In Britain the motorhome was traditionally about as glam as Bognor, with all the wild pioneering spirit of Mary Whitehouse. Our motorhomes were cheap, cramped and naff. Something even caravanners could look down on.

But now revamped modern vehicles are attracting a new generation of “cashmere campers” who crave the independence and flexibility of the gypsy lifestyle but with the luxury and style of a five-star designer hotel.

Sales of motorhomes have shot up by more than 50% in the past five years as these thirtysomething campers, disenchanted with package holidays and nostalgic for the traditional family breaks of their childhood, are overturning the image of cheap grin-and-bear-it hole-in-the-ground-toilet camping holidays.

Gone are the 1970s Formica worktops, floral curtains and plywood bunk beds. In their place are soft, sprawling sofas, muted lighting, tasteful, understated decor and king-size beds. There’s no more huddling round a crackly portable telly. Instead you can sit back and watch DVDs on the latest flat-screen television.

Standard Life bank surveyed 2,000 people and found that one in four would consider buying, or already own, a motorhome and only about one in five still regard motorhomes as cramped and uncomfortable.

“Motorhomes are increasingly popular among people in their thirties and early forties who want to experience the outdoor life — but in style,” says Ashley Ramsay, a Standard Life spokesman.

So what gave the motorhome its new mojo? One factor is hippie festivals such as Glastonbury that have become as much a part of “the season” as Ascot and Glyndebourne. Catering wagons at the festival sell Covent Garden soups, organic ostrich burgers and chilled Pimm’s and the discerning audiences aren’t prepared to put up with camping in a sea of mud.

Kate Moss, supermodel and trendsetter, took an Infinity motorhome to Glastonbury in 2004 and, as everything Moss touches turns to cool, it wasn’t long before aspirational young couples were championing the motorhome as their ticket to hassle-free camping.

Other celebrity converts include the actor Will Smith, musicians Lenny Kravitz and Robbie Williams, racing driver Jenson Button, foodies Jamie and Jools Oliver with their souped-up 1960s VW Camper, and Jay Kay, lead singer with Jamiroquai, who has just bought a 3 litre turbodiesel Knaus C-Liner with alloy wheels, futuristic metallic bodywork, ambient lighting and leather armchairs, worth £60,000.

“We have been very lucky,” says John de Mierre of the Motorhome Information Service (MIS), which represents the motorhome industry in Britain. “Celebrity owners have really given us an image boost and shown that motorhomes can be sexy and modern. But it’s also part of a wider trend for independent travel. People want the flexibility to create their own holidays, and with a motorhome you have a place you can call yours, but you can still go to a different place every year.”

The Camping and Caravanning Club, which has more than 400,000 members, says membership has increased by 10% year on year, thanks in part to a growing number of motorhomers.

As ever, the UK is following in the triple-axle tyre tracks of America, where RVs (recreational vehicles — Winnebago is a trademark) have expanded in size even more extravagantly than the waistlines of their middle-aged occupants.

Wealthy Americans are spending huge sums on giant driveable palaces where owners can relax on their reclining leather chairs, sip an ice-cold beer from the fully stocked minibar, watch the latest films on their built-in home cinema system and round off the evening with a dip in the Jacuzzi and a turn on their miniature dance floor.

Some cost as much as £500,000 and stretch to more than 32ft long with slide-out panels to add extra width. The $850,000 (£450,000) Terra Wind can even be driven through water and claims to be “the first amphibious luxury motorhome”.

“Upmarket camping has really taken off in the States,” says Ronnie Anderson of Anderson Mobile Estates, a Florida-based company specialising in very expensive custom-built RVs. “There are even campsites with their own shopping malls. People like the camaraderie of camping. It’s an environment where you can get to know your neighbours, even though you might not want to do that at home, well not in the States . . .”

Will Smith, star of Men in Black and Independence Day, recently bought a 75ft-long 200-ton two-storey RV worth $1.8m from Anderson’s company. It comes with its own dance floor, 65in plasma TVs and an automatic window-frosting effect that can be activated at the touch of a button when the star needs more privacy.

The firm is working on a similar model for Robert De Niro, which will include a dining room for 30 guests, 11 plasma televisions, a roll-down cinema screen and a private study. Other celebrity clients have included the rapper Ice Cube and Ben Stiller, star of Starsky & Hutch. “Nicole Richie borrowed one of our vans the other day and Mariah Carey loves them,” says Anderson. “She likes the cosiness and the comfort.”

European motorhomes remain smaller than their American counterparts, with prices starting from about £8,000 for a refurbished “splittie”, the original split-windscreen VW camper, or from £24,000 for a new coach-built motorhome. In an increasingly lucrative market, British suppliers such as Swift and Autosleeper are fighting to stay ahead of German rivals like Knaus and Hymer. Volkswagen recently launched the California (with prices starting at about £34,000), a modern alternative to the camper which lacks the charms of the original but makes up for it in mod-cons.

There are an estimated 131,000 motorhomes currently in use in the UK and annual sales have increased from about 5,000 five years ago to around 11,000.

“I think European manufacturers have now succeeded in making better-looking, sexier motorhomes, offering more comfort and space, but which are still small enough to cope with anything from narrow Cornish country lanes to winding Pennine mountain roads,” says de Mierre. “They’re no longer the poor relation.”

GMC motorhom classic version

What a beauty, the now-classic GMC motorhome

Is this a beautiful RV? It looks really modern, but this GMC motorhome was built about 35 years ago! I remember when I was a young man and was dreaming of buying my first RV, I drooled over this one. My idol Charles Kuralt, who roamed the back roads for CBS News, traveled with one of these for awhile, and it was featured on his "On the Road" segments on the evening news. You would often see the coach pictured as it rolled down a scenic two-lane highway. And when there was a shot of Kuralt inside at his typewriter. . . well, this aspiring young journalist went basically crazy with desire to do the same.

These classic low-profile design motorhomes went out of production 30 years ago, but you still see them, and I don't think most non-RVers would ever guess they are older than just about all the other motorhomes on the road today.

If you want to learn more about this classic coach, do a Google search using the keyword GMC motorhome and you'll find many websites and feature articles. If you own one of these, leave a comment and tell the rest of us what you think of

1

The Weird and Wonderful 6
The vans part 1

Wheelspin is grateful to author Simon Glen for permission to reproduce photographs taken by him and used in his book Volkswagens of the World

Beetle Vans

1938 KdF Kafer Panel Van	1938 Kdf Kafer Pick-up
© Simon Glen, reproduced with grateful permission

The Volkswagen Type 2, Kombi, Van, Camper, or whatever you want to call it has, the Beetle and Golf apart, been a huge success story and helped to build VW into the international car group it is today.

© Simon Glen, reproduced with grateful permission

Besides the standard production campers, pick-ups, panel vans and others, the type 2 has been adapted to just about any task that it can be put to. As well as that, Volkswagen and others have made various VW vans.

But the type 2 was not the first Volkswagen van. As far back as 1938 KDF (as the company was known as then) produced a limited number of panel vans based on the Kafer (the KDF name for the Beetle, and one still used in Germany). These were exclusively used by the KDF works ; sadly none survived the war.

1940s Kubelwagen Post Van	1940s Kafer Post Van
© Simon Glen, reproduced with grateful permission

When the British took over the KDF factory in 1945 there was an urgent need for light vans, as well as the standard saloon cars. With what was at hand, Kubelwagen and Kafer panel vans were built. Of these, the type 28 was basically a Kubelwagen with a boxy back section, and the type 83 was a Kafer bodied version. Most of these saw service with the German post office and some were converted into ambulances. None of the 200 odd vans built in 1945 are known to have survived.

In 1946 Wolfsburg commissioned a local firm to convert several Beetles into vans. These conversions were used by the factory and, again, none have survived.

1946 Kafer Panel Van Prototype © Simon Glen, reproduced with grateful permission

The end of the story for the Beetle based van came in 1956 when the German Post office commissioned Karmann to build a Beetle van prototype. The prototype was made but production never started, instead the Deusch Post later embarked on the Fridolin project in the 1960s (see April Wheelspin)

Before the Type 2

Plattenwagen

In 1947 a Dutch VW importer, Ben Pon, visited the Volkswagen factory and commented on the need for a light 1 ton van. Whether Volkswagen was already planning to produce a van proper is unknown, but by 1950 split screen vans were rolling off the production lines. Ben Pon would have seen what many describe as the forerunner of the type 2 at the Volkswerks. The Plattenwagen was used as a stand-in fork lift truck in the 1940s at the VW factory, It was essentially just a flat top Kafer with the driver seated over the engine at the back (see picture below).

The Plattenwagen copyright by VW-Veteranenclub Mnster e.V. http://home.t-online.de/home/vw-veteranenclub.muenster

The Tempo Matador

Another development came just a year before type 2 production started. A small German firm was producing the Tempo Matador, a light truck produced from 1949 thru 1952 .These vehicles came from the Tempo factory with brand new VW 25 h.p. motors mated to a ZF 4-speed, front wheel drive transaxle (not VW transaxle). VW then realized they would like to build their own trucks at that time and terminated the offering of new engines to Tempo. Tempo subsequently switched to the Austin 4 cylinder, water cooled powerplant. (Thanks to Eric for updated info on this vehicle).

While the vehicle is nothing special, it used VW parts to built a light van which importantly, was a successful export; notably to Australia. This last fact could only have spurred VW on with its own plans to plug this gap and gain some much needed export money.

An Australian Tempo Matador

The type 2

In March 1950 the Type 2 at last became available to buy and was an immediate success. Best known in its work clothes as the panel van and as the family home from home as the camper.

Karmann T2 Motorhome	Karmann T2 (4th generation) Motorhome
- © Simon Glen, reproduced with grateful permission

The various flavours of camper conversions are too numerous to mention here, but apart from the more standard camper conversions there have been a few oddities.

Karmann (yes producers of the famous Ghia and water cooled Scirocco) built many motor home conversion based on the type 2, water cooled transporters and the Volkswagen LT (light truck). These conversions are more in the flavour of the caravan - motorhome.

Club member Tony Spencer has also recently imported a Camper conversion from Australia, originally built in South Africa. I will let him describe it in his own words.

Tony Spencer's Jurgens motorhome picture by club member Tony Spencer

"This is not your standard Kombi that travelling Aussies are famous for, but a South African import which has a full caravan body on the back, which makes it pretty unique in Australia and generates lots of looks and interest, and makes her very roomy.

She is affectionately known as "The Barn" or "AutoBarn" from the lettering applied by a previous owner and because she is an automatic. She was built in South Africa, the chassis by VW and the body by a company called Jurgens. She has a 1975 chassis, with a 1974 VW air cooled 1800cc twin carb engine with 3 speed auto transmission, had the body built in 1976 and was imported to Australia by the first owner, George Lithgo and first registered in Western Australia in February 1977, so she's basically 22 years old, and had just 88,700km on the clock.

She is fully kitted out with a cooker (gas) and fridge (gas/electric) and even a shower, with two sinks, one in the shower room and one in the kitchen area. She has a power hookup for 240 volts from campsites, and is fitted with Australian power outlets, and is right hand drive of course. She can sleep four, two in a double in the Luton head over the front seats, and two more either on separate beds in the back, which can be converted to a large double by using the fold down table. Cupboard space is good and we have managed to find homes for all of our stuff. Decor is pretty much classic 70s orange and brown.

Because of her weight and drag, top speed is not so hot, she'll do about 95kph on the flat, up to 110kph at full whack with a slight downhill, and the petrol consumption is around 7km per litre, which I guess is about 20mpg. She's fine for cruising anyway.

See it on the web at http://www.tspencer.dircon.co.uk/bulletinsFeb99.htm

Well, It's got a VW Engine

One last oddity before I begin to look for next months weird and wonderful. Light vans were built with Beetle engines and transmissions by an enterprising Greek company. The engine sat in the centre of the chassis, ahead of the transmission which drove the rear wheels of these 3 wheelers. 3 wheelers were popular in Greece at the time since they attracted less tax.

A Greek 3 wheeler tax saver - © Simon Glen, reproduced with grateful permission