camperfanatic

  Beatles tour vans 1960-66... and other famous band-vans An Austin van, similar to this one, also with two-tone pantwork, was owned by the first Beatles manager Alan Williams, and used by them in the UK and on their journey to Hamburg As a freelance writer, author of four books, and historian on the subject of campervans and motorhomes, I also have an avid interest in classic light commercial vehicles/vans of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Another of my interests is music (listening not playing), and in particular the music and bands of the 60s and 70s. I was fortunate to see many great bands play live during those decades, some at the height of their popularity and some much later on the cabaret circuit. My two interests came together after I began to research which tour vans some of the 60s bands had used, The Beatles in particular as I was/am a huge fan, but this did lead me to go on the hunt for info relating to other UK 60s bands, and how and what they used to cover eve...

In my 40+ year involvement with UK motorhomes and campervans, I have come across some weird, and strange examples, so in this blog I'm deviating from my own ongoing campervan story to bring you just a small sample, taken from my huge archive of motorhome material. I'm going to focus upon the British Mini, the iconic small car, which believe or not, did have several camper conversions based on it, though some more successful than others. I did include a chapter about this type of campervan in my 2007 book, Classic Camper-vans; the inside story (Crowood Press) , and I've included many examples over the years within  magazine articles. I will kick things off with one of my personal all-time favourite 'strange' models, the 'Caraboot', a 1960s car-cum-caravan, cum-boat and camper! It was based on the Austin-Morris Mini van and was simply trying too hard to be too many things, and as a result, few were ever sold, though I believe that there is a sole survivor bas...