camperfanatic

I decided to have a quick scan through my Blogger stats the other day, and was quite surprised to learn that a blog which I did some time ago about Austin-Morris based campervans was by far the most popular to date as far as viewing figures were concerned. Why I should be surprised that the Austin-Morris blog was so popular I don't know, because of course the marque was famous around the world, and the classic Mini-based campervans I featured were something of a rarity! With small British campers in mind, I've decided to bring you a selection of other 'micro' models which might be of interest from the classic era; those based on such vehicles as the Ford Escort, Morris Marina and the like. Pictured above is one of the rarist of all British 'micro' campervans, the Mini Wildgoose, produced in small numbers during the mid-1960s down in Worthing, Sussex. The only other small camper from that periopd to sell with any degree of success was the 'Roma', by...

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...