Popular donor vans included the Volkswagen Type 2, Ford’s Transit, Rootes’ Commer FC, BMC’s Morris J2 and J4 and Vauxhall’s Bedford CA. Camper vans’ heyday ended in 1973, when they and caravans were hit with the new value added tax, raising prices by around 10%.
Other buying guides from Autocar included those for caravan accessories: shock dampers, jacks, brackets, awnings, battery-powered televisions, porta-showers, ‘chemical sanitation’ (not bogs?) and even a periscope.
Not everyone was in on the craze, of course. “For as long as I can remember, I have been against caravans,” wrote our man David Phipps in 1971. “They clutter up the roads, and three weeks in one must surely constitute grounds for divorce.”
But when he acquiesced to his two young children’s pleas to attend that year’s German Grand Prix, a caravan was the only viable option.
He had been offered one by Rolf Stommelen, the driver for German caravan maker Eifelland’s new F1 team. Not a joke! Founder Günther Hennerici had always been a racing enthusiast, and what better way to promote his business? Amazing, considering that even Cadillac is hardly welcome in F1 these days.
Phipps ended up taking his family all the way to Radstadt in Austria, yet “my Ford Cortina Estate needed no attention whatsoever, I am still happily married and I am actually contemplating doing this again”.
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