These Weird Fiberglass Campers Turned Cars Into Small Motorhomes And It’s Not What You’d Expect

Travel trailers have been an effective way to go camping for about as long as the car itself has been around. Towing a travel trailer is simple, too, as you just hitch up and go. But what if you didn’t want a trailer wagging around behind your car? What if you wanted to turn your existing car into a motorhome? That’s exactly what more than one French firm has done in the past by selling campers that didn’t just mate to cars, but turned them into rigid motorhomes.

The vast majority of travel trailers produced over more than the last century all follow the same concept. Like a wagon, they hitch up to the back of your tow vehicle. Travel trailers are usually independent vehicles and they’re allowed to handle road surfaces and conditions on their own. A travel trailer also turns your whole rig into an articulating vehicle. If you’ve ever towed a travel trailer before, you’re well aware of the downsides, from the possibility of the tail wagging the dog to the fact that in many jurisdictions, you cannot ride in the camper as it travels.

How do you solve those issues? Mount the camper to the tow vehicle in such a manner that it becomes a rigid vehicle!

In the 1980s and the 1990s, two French companies produced their own versions of this idea. The Maillet Rando-Car turned a smaller French car into a motorhome while the ClipCar Evolution was essentially a hard-mounted fifth-wheel camper for cars. German company HEKU Fahrzeugbau GmbH even got in on the concept, making its own flavor of the idea from 1990 to the late 2010s.

Caravanes Maillet

Let’s start with the weirdest of the bunch. According to the Retro Camping Club Of France, Jean Maillet was originally a tailor. His interests began changing in 1962 when he took a vacation. For that time away, he decided to build a camper out of wood.

At the same time, Maillet discovered and fell in love with laminated polyester, a type of fiberglass. Maillet reportedly was so enchanted by the strength and flexibility of fiberglass that he made things out of the stuff, including chairs, tables, sinks, showers, and more. Inspired by that camping trip, Maillet also began designing fiberglass campers.

Maillet first focused on travel trailers, including the Eric and Sylvie series, which were named after his children. These trailers were numbered, with higher numbers being larger, heavier units. For example, an Eric II like the 1970 example below was 14 feet long and weighed 1,500 pounds. Depending on the configuration, this fiberglass camper slept four or five people.

The smallest of the Eric range was the Eric I, which came in at 10 feet and 925 pounds with a maximum occupancy of four people. Maillet wasn’t afraid to experiment with his fiberglass campers. In addition to motorhomes, he designed the Tiger, a camper that detached from its frame to become a temporary structure, and the Houseboat, which is pretty self-explanatory.

Another weird Maillet creation is the Rando-Car, which was designed by Maillet and constructed by the Ateliers Sainte Catherine Carrossier Constructeur.

Upon first inspection, the Rando-Car looks like an interpretation of one of those old Volkswagen fifth-wheel campers, but it’s way more than that. Maillet wanted to turn French family cars into motorhomes. The Rando-Car connected to the tow vehicle’s tow ball like any other camper, but then it employed a roof-mounted slider system to prevent the camper from turning. The only allowed movement was vertical along the slide system so that the camper and car could tackle elevation changes.

Otherwise, when you turn your Rando-Car-equipped car, the trailer follows the exact path of the car. There was no horizontal articulation, no swaying, and the trailer looked nearly perfectly integrated with your tow vehicle, including neat smoothing body panels.

The Rando-Car was supposed to be a bit of a compromise between a travel trailer and a small motorhome. You didn’t need to haul an articulating trailer to your camping spot, but you also didn’t need a motorhome either. You could drag your Rando-Car to your camping spot, detach it, and still have your car to drive around in. One noted benefit of this compromise was better handling. You didn’t have to worry about a trailer tugging on the back of your family car or having to drive a lumbering giant RV.

What you got out of the other side was a cozy space for two. Rando-Cars have floorplans like a truck slide-in camper does, with a small kitchen in the rear, a dinette up front, and an over-cab section with a bed. Rando-Cars also had a pop-top roof to give more space above the bed. You could also turn that overhang into a spare room using a tent attachment.

From some of the data I have been able to find, the 12.1-foot Rando-Cars weighed about 661 pounds, and loaded, they weighed 1,102 pounds. I bet you’re wondering about tongue weight, and things get a little weird here. Since many cars aren’t designed to have a weight pressing on their roofs, the Rando-Car is designed with more weight in the rear to counterbalance the front of the camper.

Inside the unit, you got a 5.8-gallon fresh tank, a 5.8-gallon grey tank, a sink, a small refrigerator, and a two-burner stove. That was the majority of your features. You did not get a bathroom and you did not get an air-conditioner or other luxuries that are standard on today’s campers.

Maillet Rando-Cars were adaptable for a number of cars out there, and you can find pictures of them hitched up to vehicles new and old. However, due to the low overhang and roof track mechanism, the Rando-Car was not compatible with tall vehicles such as vans, people carriers, SUVs, and trucks. Some people have modified either their Rando-Car or their tow vehicle to work.

Production of the Rando-Car began in the late 1980s. It’s unclear when Rando-Car production ended, or how many were made. The newest example I found was built in 1995. However, Maillet reportedly ended all camper production around 2005 and shifted to making camper accessories. Jean Maillet passed in 1982.

The ClipCar Evolution

Amazingly, Maillet wasn’t the only person trying to turn cars into micro motorhomes. In the 1990s, French craftsman and coachbuilder Paul Ledon created the ClipCar Evolution.

In concept, the ClipCar Evolution is similar to the Rando-Car. The trailer attaches to a tow vehicle using a tow bar and a roof system. However, the ClipCar Evolution utilizes a special roof rack for roof attachment. The ClipCar Evolution is also less integrated with its tow vehicle, so it looks like a fifth wheel attached to the top of a French car.

Like the Rando-Car, the ClipCar does not articulate like a typical trailer. Instead, it is rigid to the vehicle and turns with the tow car. Yet again, only vertical movement is allowed through the special roof rack. One important departure from the Rando-Car is the fact that the ClipCar Evolution can be attached to a greater variety of vehicles, including pickup trucks and vans.

Inside, the ClipCar Evolution was also a more refined camping experience, offering buyers a well-appointed interior that included everything you got in a Rando-Car, but with better finishes. In addition, your ClipCar Evolution could also get a bathroom and you didn’t need a pop-top to have ample room in the over-cab bed. Ledon also advertised the ClipCar Evolution as having practically endless options. Want forced-air heating? He could install that. Want your ClipCar to be more of an office? He could do that, too. The ClipCar was advertised as being able to have any feature of a regular camper, including jacks, television antennae, and more.

The downside to the ClipCar Evolution was heft. All of those extra features and the extra body meant more weight. The smallest ClipCar Junior came in at 1,984 pounds while the ClipCar Canadien clocked in at a maximum of 2,755 pounds. In the middle was the ClipCar Floride (Florida) at 2,204 pounds.

The Junior was the base model, which sold for 12,200 Euros (€18,167 or $19,845 today) in 2007. For that price, you got the shell, stabilizers, and storage. If you wanted more, you had to run through the options list. The Floride was 23,000 Euros (€34,250 or $37,417 today) in 2007 and netted you more windows, a kitchen, a sink, a dinette, a wardrobe, a work desk, a bed, extra storage, and a refrigerator. You also got a 12V and 220V electrical system with your Floride. The top-of-the-line 24,500 Euros (€36,484 or $39,857 today) Canadien gave you all of the previous features, plus a bathroom and holding tanks. The fresh tank and black tanks were 13.1 gallons each.

ClipCars were advertised with this pitch below:

Less expensive than a Motorhome, safer than a caravan, you do not have to incur the costs of a second vehicle, engine maintenance, insurance, technical inspection…. ClipCar® adapts to the vehicle of your choice. ClipCar® travels with your vehicle every day. It then becomes very economical. In addition, you enjoy the pleasures and advantages of providing the vehicle of your choice.

Sadly, I could not find new pricing for the Rando-Car to compare it with. What I was able to find was some claims that sometimes, a ClipCar could tear itself from the tow vehicle’s roof. A suggestion from an owner was to take sharp turns slowly. I also could not find sales data for the ClipCar Evolution, but the firm seems to have gone out of business in the late 2000s.

Germany Has One, Too

Weirdly, the idea of turning cars into motorhomes did not stay with these French firms. German company HEKU Fahrzeugbau GmbH was building what it called the Car Camp starting in 1990. Like the French entries, the Car Camp hitched to a car through the car’s towbar and a special roof rack. It also didn’t articulate, but unlike the French creations, the Car Camp sits flush with the tow vehicle. It appears this camper is also out of production, but HEKU was marketing the camper as late as 2016.

Another differentiating factor with the 14.5-foot HEKU Car Camp was the fact that it was designed to fit specific vehicles, rather than a variety. The latest Car Camp was a 22,450 Euro ($24,525) camper that was designed to fit the back of the Opel Astra, which was sold in America as a Saturn. Previous Car Camp iterations rode on the back of older Opel Astras and even the Kadett. One thing I haven’t noted about all of these campers is the fact that despite appearances, they could still travel at speeds around and above 70 mph, so you weren’t clogging up the highway with them.

I’m sure this trio aren’t the only campers like this out there. As I mentioned before, there were campers that hitched to the roofs of cars, but they still articulated. These fiberglass campers tried to bridge the gap between motorhomes and travel trailers. While these campers aren’t made anymore, they have a strong following of Europeans who love to hitch them up to new cars before hitting the road for a fun trek. Could something like this work in America? I love thinking about hooking one of these up to my diesel Volkswagens.