Full disclosure: over the years many improbable things have happened, but Winnebago building a camper out of a Smart car is thankfully something that never did occur. I will say that if such a thing did exist, our own Smart superfan Mercedes Streeter would go through hell and back to acquire it, or maybe even Florida. Here is the fictitious account of her fictitious journey to do just that:
Six-thousand two-hundred and ninety air sickness bags? How about six-hundred and seventy-five back scratchers? Nearly six hundred pizza boxes amassed by one individual? Hard to imagine, but these are but a few actual collections of odd items in the Guinness Book of World Records, and they sort of make you question the sanity of the people that put these strange, massive assortments together. When you look at these collectors and then look at me with my mere six (or is it seven?) Smart cars, comparatively I don’t seem to have any issues at all, right?
Think again! I’ve only just begun with my half-dozen cars, and I’ve got a long way to go. In fact, I recently found another Smart that I had to have, did have briefly, and then didn’t. Let me explain.
A Smart Love
From the moment I walked into the Smart showroom in Lake Bluff, Illinois in 2008, I knew that I had found my automotive soul mate. This eight and half foot long egg-shaped creation seemed to be pure perfection to me. They’ve said that styling a tiny car is like tailoring a suit for a squirrel, yet there is pure beauty in what has to be about as small a transportation device as you can buy without resorting to my other love- motorcycles.
Still, my current Smart fleet consists of what have to be considered cooking-variety models. Do you see a Brabus Smart in my possession? Is a Smart Crossblade owned by me? What about a soon-to-be-legally-imported Smart Roadster? No, Smart made far more of these oddball versions of an already oddball car, and I feel a need to own them all.
Smarts seem exist for almost all of you needs, unless you want to actually camp in your ride. Sadly, there’s no room for a microwave and sleeping bag in a ForTwo unless you were crazy enough to do some major metal surgery on one. It turns out, one company once did just that.
Hope You Don’t Need To Get There Quickly
When the going gets tough, the tough often get weird. Radical changes require even more radical thinking, and that though process can produce some odd solutions.
If you look at any grainy image a campground in the late sixties, you’ll see that the motorhome of choice for most of the crew-cut men and beehive hair ladies of the time had a huge “W” on the side. Winnebago might not have had a monopoly on the market, but with their distinctive shape they did seem to be the first name most people thought of in large self-propelled campers.
Sadly, as the two gas crunches hit and recessions of the Malaise era hit the industry, suddenly big block -powered boxes lost their appeal to many middle-class families. Winnebago needed to change with the times, and you’d be shocked to hear that this Forest City, Iowa company found their solution on the other side of the pond in France.
In 1982, Winnebago introduced the LeSharo, a much smaller motorhome (which I’ve written about before) that was based on the small Renault Trafic (yes, that’s how it’s spelled) cargo van. Behind the add-on aerodynamic nose cone was a diesel engine that could get four to five times the fuel economy of your typical Winnebago (up to 23mpg), though it came only with a manual four speed to help get this thing to move with only 66 horsepower (I’ve seen some sources report an even worse 57HP).
All you Jasonites out there: yes, those are FWD Buick Skylark headlamp and turn signal clusters on that aero nose grafted to the Renault Trafic on the early LeSharos:
How this nearly twenty-foot- long, 5700 pound thing was able to climb hills or even move at all is unknown, but thankfully Winnebago added a turbocharger the following year and eventually a 2.2 liter gas motor to raise power to nearly 100 horses (and allow for an optional automatic).
Despite these performance limitations, Winnebago was able to move nearly 22,000 LeSharos over the little motorhome’s ten year production run, after which it was replaced by the equally power-starved VW Eurovan-based Rialto. Falling gas prices meant that Winnebago then focused more on their traditional large motorhomes, but what goes around comes around, and boy did it ever.
As bad as the Malaise era might have seemed to motorhome makers, they didn’t hold a candle to the repercussions of the Financial Crisis of 2008. This might have been the darkest hour for the industry, as many builders went bankrupt or out of business as shipments fell from the typical 300,000-400,000 a year down to less than 166,000 campers. Winnebago hunkered down and decided to take a page from their history book by looking abroad for an answer to a smaller, more affordable product. This time, however, the motorhome manufacturing legend overshot their mark, with disastrous results. Disastrous, but painfully desirable to yours truly.
It’s A Camper! It’s A Minivan! It’s Glacially Slow!
Most rare versions of the Smart are painfully elusive, especially here in the Smart-unfriendly USA, so when one of these unicorns goes up for sale a little while back within the lower forty-eight states, I usually take notice. Sure enough, a few weeks back, I suddenly sensed a disturbance in the SmartForce.
Scrolling through page after page of Smart cars on a laptop can get monotonous, so when something that looks a bit like the Popemobile pops up you tend to take notice. It took a few moments to register, but there on my screen with yellowed headlights and a few mold spots in West Miami, Florida was a true Smart grail and an example of the failed attempt by Winnebago to create an affordable, economical multi-use motorhome for decimated economy of the late 2000s. This, my friends, was a SmartHome.
What, exactly, is a SmartHome? Well, supposedly after traditional motorhome sales cratered, Winnebago enlisted outside industrial design and automotive aftermarket firms to create their savior. The goals were:
1.) Small enough to fit in a garage
2.) Inexpensive and highly efficient
3.) Possibly useable as small everyday car.
That last one was an interesting nice-to-have, since beyond a Westfalia VW Bus very few campers are designed to be used as daily drivers as well. Winnebago figured with tough financial times anyone investing a chunk of change into a vehicle would want it to earn its keep more than just a few weekends a year.
Most of the proposed solutions utilized small vans or small SUV as a basis, as these supposed sketches from one of the design agencies shows:
Concepts involved things like pop tops and even a fold out floor so that opened rear double doors could create an expansion area.
Still, the most insane idea involved, of all things, a Smart car. The idea was that the Smart seemed to take up the least length for driver and front passenger plus engine, leaving plenty of space for the actual camper part of the machine within a length less than that of a Ford Explorer. It was the only rear-engined car sold beyond the Porsche 911 at the time, and diesel fuel meant unmatched fuel economy.
For daily use as a car, the SmartHome utilized the massive baby cathedral-like space in back. There was room for an extra (VERY cramped) row of seats which meant that this thing could be converted to a six or seven passenger micro-van, or you could sit in the rear seat with unlimited legroom and a Scenicruiser-like view; people could view you through the giant rear windows while you waved at them like royals in a coronation.
Once at the campsite, a fold out table lets the rear seat/couch become a dinette, or the whole business folds flat to make a bed. If you had those middle row seats you could take them out to use around the campfire or to chill outside.
There was a single door on the passenger’s side of the car:
Somehow Winnebago thought that this improbable concoction was The Answer, and production began of the SmartHome in late 2009. Smarts were taken to the Winnebago factory in Forest City, Iowa and sliced aft the doors. A steel tube frame was welded in to stretch the wheelbase while fiberglass panels to match the existing Smart plastic pieces were installed to create the tall rear compartment.
A turbocharger was added to the Smart’s motor to increase power to a still-meager 101 horsepower (but still more than that old LeSharo). Winnebago must have ignored the fact that Smarts were always rather disappointing in terms of gas mileage; everyone assumes that something so dinky must get better than the 42 or so miles to gallon they sometimes struggle to achieve. Regardless, the SmartHome still delivered fuel economy far better than a typical van-based camper.
None of this, nor the “needs refurbishing” disclaimer in the ad, discouraged me from grabbing the phone immediately and making an offer on one of the mere 237 SmartHomes made before the whole venture went the way you would think two years later. How was I gonna make this deal happen?
Looks Like We’re Flying To Miami
My couch cushions did not yield the change to procure this moldering masterpiece, so another plan was hatched. I liked the looks of the 2007 E61 BMW 530xi wagon that I bought from The Bishop, but as a car it was really better suited to the boring family man that he is than free-spirit me. Also, The Bishop wasted tens of thousands into keeping this thing alive so I figured that, despite the automatic transmission, I might be able to get some needed scratch to buy this purple unicorn of a Smart.
Within forty-eight hours of hitting craigslist the dull-but-clean wagon for obnoxious WASP moms left my parking lot; cash in hand I made the deal over the phone for what seemed to be the harmonic convergence of my love for Smart and campers. What could go wrong?
Boarding a Spiritual Airways flight is always a bit insane. This budget division of Spirit Airlines has no boarding groups, so it’s just a free-for-all moving mosh pit to get on the plane. Once inside, you grab a space on an open bench seat with vinyl upholstery identical to that on a Blue Bird school bus. I get a spot next to the window, and the other three people on my bench hand me a buck so that I can scan the QR code and pay five dollars to open the window shade. I’m a frequent Spiritual Airways flyer so I get to close it again for only two dollars. It’s pretty wretched but for a forty-five dollar ticket to Miami, who’s complaining?
I’m surprised that the 1997 737 Classic makes it to Miami without incident; the best part of any Spiritual Airline flights is getting off.
As my Uber from the airport approached the seller’s lot, my excitement was almost beyond control. There it sat in all of its majestic glory:
Thankfully, cold water was poured on this euphoria rather quickly; cold water on parts of the floorboard that had seemingly run though the pop-open skylight, that is. Yeah, it seems as if vehicle made for exploring nature had taken on a bit of nature inside as well.
The mold smell was a moderately strong, yet there was a worse scent that I couldn’t identify. This SmartHome, like most, had a door to enter the rear compartment on the passenger’s side, and in the area behind the front seats where the engine used to be before the stretching resides your needed camping accessories. This one was loaded with a sink, cooktop, mini-microwave and a refrigerator filled with, oh my goodness, YEAR OLD HOT POCKETS. Of course, now they resemble some kind of spores from a sci-fi film that what were once Hot Pockets. Yikes. I don’t want to look at the the slide-out cartridge toilet. Yeah, we need to get this aired out by opening the “roof bubble” skylight over the roof of the original Smart up front (they call it a “loft” but you really can’t put much there).
At least the thing starts up and runs reasonably well with a distinctive turbo whine added into the soundtrack. I’m ready to get on a Spiritual flight back home if the seller doesn’t knock off a few bucks; he attempts the “I know what I’ve got” approach briefly. Yes, you have a plastic terrarium with interior water features and furry objects in the icebox which smell like gym socks full of Baby Bell cheese marinated in vinegar (trying my best Derek Bieri there). “I’ve got a guy that’s calling me from Indiana wanting to buy it” says the guy. Sure there was, at which point I’m reluctantly ready to walk. The seller ultimately realizes he could be stuck with this thing forever and relents; this absurd, magnificent object is mine.
What Is This? A Motorhome For Ants?
Owning a whole fleet of Smarts gives me a point of reference, so it’s quite odd to be driving what seems like one of my other half dozen cars and see essentially another car in the rear view mirror connected to mine. My expectations for performance were basically nil, so the SmartHome’s ability to cruise at nearly 75 for hours is surprising; even with the drag of the roof bubble window popped slightly to get some of the mold scent out with a highway breeze. SmartHome is so long that a badly out of balance tire in back seems like it’s states away. Eventually the wobbling of the wheel becomes too much to deal with, and I pull over to realize the tire is getting quite low thanks to a nail liberating the air in it. In my haste during negotiations in Miami I hadn’t checked to see that the spare wheel hump on back of the SmartHome contained, well, nothing.
It was dark by the time I’d reached an Autozone outside of Nashville just before they closed. Dave the counter person was amazingly helpful with plugging the tire and offering a compressor. At this point, I was flat out dead and looking for a safe place to stop, and Dave said that there was no reason that I couldn’t stay parked in the well-lit and guarded Autozone lot to get some needed shuteye. I closed the built-in drapes to snooze-test my new-to-me sort-of-camper after bumping my head numerous times on the very low ceiling (it is around six feet, and admittedly the Ford Transit Connect “van life” campers are even lower inside).
The nice thing about being dead tired is that you can sleep essentially anywhere like a rock, even if it’s in a tiny plastic box parked in front of an auto parts store. I was, however, awakened briefly by some jostling but it had been windy the night so I chalked it up to that. Still, what was that “thud” I felt? I look up and see nobody was in the driver’s seat but it seemed like the whole SmartHome was moving. Thankfully, opening the shades explained things right away. The SmartHome was now on a flatbed going down the street.
I hopped out of the bed and lunged for the driver’s seat, laying on the feeble horn for what felt like an eternity. Suddenly the flatbed stopped; I opened the door and jumped onto the street. The flatbed driver was not particularly polite and things were about to get heated when a cop’s black-and-white Explorer pulled up with lights flashing. Apparently a “bounce house on a flatbed with a blasting horn” 911 call from a person we passed had raised suspicions.
As you can guess, Dave the Autozone employee that helped me didn’t exactly have the authority to let me stay in the lot, nor was he communicative of the take-no-prisoners hook-em-up-and-remove-them attitude his Autozone managers had to seemingly non-functional vehicles left in the lot. It took some wrangling and pulling of my international auto journalist credentials to get the SmartHome back on the ground and get the hell out and back on the road.
“That Belongs In A Museum”
Despite not always making smart (excuse the pun, or don’t) decisions, occasionally I’ve been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. This happened again somewhere in rural Ohio once I got away from the clutches of the flatbed.
Driving into a headwind, the motor was screaming in back trying to keep this funny looking thing above 65 miles and hour. I thought about the lack of a coolant temperature gauge and the fact that Winnebago added feet of coolant hose to connect the engine in the back with the radiator up front. To be honest, combined with that uncomfortable night sleeping in this little car and also realizing the amount of work needed to get it back into true working, useable condition I started having second thoughts on spending such a pretty penny to acquire this Grail. Never meet your heroes, I guess. It was at this exact time that my cell phone rang.
Over the din of the SmartHome’s roaring motor, I hear that the man on the other end of the phone was (name redacted), the head of one of my favorite places on earth, the RV Hall of Fame off of 1-80 in Indiana (which I was going to pass on my way home). Supposedly, a well-to-do benefactor that had donated a few campers to the museum already had seen the SmartHome for sale online too late to buy it and offer to the Hall of Fame for restoration and display. The seller in Miami wasn’t lying: there WAS a “guy from Indiana” after all! It was quickly determined by them who had actually purchased the thing (me), and (name redacted) was taking a long shot attempt to see if I would be willing to sell. A few hours later, the SmartHome was sitting in front of what would be its new home, the main building at the Hall Of Fame.
I’m really terrible at being a greedy sonova so-and-so; besides what I paid I ask only for my travel costs reimbursed and a ride back to my apartment. My demands were quickly met (an Uber Black Navigator no less!) and suddenly I was back home and once again with the title to just six Smarts. Or was it seven?
Goodbye, SmartHome; I barely knew you. I promise to come and visit you often.
Am I Getting Smart?
Call it wisdom, call it common sense, but as I now reach a ripe old age (sort of) and write things that, surprisingly, thousands of people might read I’m starting to better understand the impact of my actions.
I can work to fill my parking lot with cars that I’ve dreamed of, but quite often wanting something is better than actually having it, particularly if that something will likely just sit and collect dust while I move onto the next quest. Actually, it wouldn’t collect dust as much as mold, bird poop and angry stares and possible vandalism from people that think I’m taking up too many spaces in an apartment complex.
Wouldn’t it be better to have this piece of Smart and Winnebago history get the love it deserves? Shouldn’t some ten-year-old kid see this thing in the corner of a museum and maybe have their lives changed forever, just as this stupid little car and funky motorhomes did for me?
I certainly think so. Besides, do you know how many more months it will be before I need the cash to legally import a Smart Roadster? Yeah, I haven’t gained that much common sense.
Mini-Popemobile.
Reminds me a bit of those kei passenger vans where the seats just turn into a tatami-mat sitting area.
I’m so bummed I can’t buy this in real life.
The concept is no crazier than the Mini based Wild Goose motorhome. basically a Class C stuck to a classic Mini. This was possibly the only camper slower than a diesel Vanagon.
Oh.
My.
GAWD.
There’s a shitter in that thing?!? And it’s in the kitchen?!? Ick!!!
And Bishop, this is just cruel. I know it’s fake. You stated pretty clearly it’s fake. We ALL KNOW it’s fake.
But I can feel Mercedes getting the “gotta buy it” jitters, and I’m in Oklahoma!
Edit: did you call it Spiritual Airlines because it’s such a miserable experience, you’ll be praying that God just smites the plane right out of the sky?
After seeing the illustrations Mercedes did indeed say “I wish this was real”
Mercedes, Smart and a camper…this just writes itself!
If Smart had released the Roadster in the US…
To be honest, Mercedes herself wrote some of the better jokes in this thing.
I figured she had to be part of the write-up, it sounds like her voice!
Basically, I just couldn’t think of any more eighties Jeeps for David to buy.