This 52-Year-Old Fiberglass Camper Is A Better Way To Travel Than Most Modern RVs

In just a couple of months time, America’s highways will soon be clogged up by gigantic lumbering rolling hotel rooms calling themselves campers. But some of the best campers are the ones that don’t need a heavy-duty pickup truck to tow them. If you have $10,000 or less, you can pick up something like the Amerigo FG-16, a compact 1,800-ish pound cutie that would be perfect to take a small family on a fun vacation.

A few days ago I received a familiar call from my mom. I monitor the conditions of the family campers and every spring, my mom rings up my phone asking me to remind her about the things that were broken as of storage time last year. Would you be surprised to hear that I have an entire list of problems to talk about for both of my family’s massive campers? A couple of years ago, I wrote about how my family got a killer deal on fixing water damage in our 2007 Thor Adirondack 31BH. Well, because RV ownership is just as tragic as a romance novel, that trailer is now having a different part fail, leading to water damage in a different place.

As cool as huge campers are, there’s a lot of appeal to small rigs, especially fiberglass cuties. You don’t need big trucks to tow them and if you get one made out of fiberglass you should have a better time than my parents are having. Some of the most popular vintage fiberglass campers, like the famed Scamp 13, are pretty tiny. But if you go a touch larger, you can get some nice space and still keep under 2,000 pounds. That’s what’s being offered by the Amerigo FG-16.

From An Obscure Dead Brand

It’s hard finding concrete information about Amerigo on the Internet, but after a deep dive, I finally found the story of this relatively obscure brand. According to a 1969 issue of Trailer Life, Amerigo was founded in the late 1960s by engineer Stewart E. Gardner and banker Clayton S. Emmert. At the time, Gardner was 29 years old and he brought some unique experience to the table. He was a recent graduate in engineering and his family had a history of home construction. Gardner wanted to build a camper that was more than just good. He wanted to build something that blew everything else out of the water and looked good doing it, too.

The Trailer Life article did not indicate who originally came up with the Amerigo design and name. Vintage RV enthusiasts often repeat an unconfirmed story that Gardner bought the design from someone else. An original Amerigo truck camper started with a fiberglass floor panel. Then two layers of plywood were piled on top with vinyl covering finally completing the bottom of the structure. From there, Amerigo framed the walls out of split-free lumber. 1.5 inches of polystyrene were added for its insulation properties and for rigidity.

The roof is also said to have a wood structure with a half-inch side of plywood on top. All of this wood was screwed and glued together. It also used double bracing on all corners. Trailer Life continues by saying that the outer roof is a single piece of fiberglass, as is the camper’s cap. Aluminum was used for siding.

While the Amerigo’s construction quality wouldn’t be very impressive today, it was reportedly considered remarkably solid for the late 1960s. Amerigo didn’t stop there, as the body of the truck camper had a sort of sexy rounded design that was ahead of its time for the era, and Amerigo would also make a camper trailer line with a similar building technique.

Gardner later founded the Gardner-Pacific Corporation in 1973. A year later, Gardner filed a patent for a full fiberglass truck camper. This would later become known as Sunrader, another business for Gardner’s empire. Amerigo was still around too, and now it also began moving toward full fiberglass. Somewhere along the way, Kampgrounds of America (KOA) got involved in this operation in some capacity. Early 1970s brochures say that Amerigo is a brand of Gardner Inc., itself a brand of KOA.

The Amerigo FG-16

Sadly, it appears that Gardner’s businesses didn’t do much advertising and the documents that may be out there have not been archived digitally. What I can say is that in roughly 1973, Amerigo launched a new camper concept. The Amerigo FG-16 featured a two-piece fiberglass body and rode on a steel frame. Compact fiberglass campers were taking off around this time and while I couldn’t find an explanation for the creation of the FG-16, clearly the company wanted to be a part of the new trend.

Amerigo touted a few main benefits of the FG-16. The company said the fiberglass construction was nearly maintenance-free and even if you did have a bad day, there weren’t wood walls to rot out, anyway. Amerigo went even further, noting that unlike some other early fiberglass campers it didn’t have metal in its structure, either. That meant any water leaks didn’t cause rust.

Of course, this was a time of oil crises and an economic crunch, so Amerigo advertised the lightweight camper as being able to be pulled by any car while not sacrificing too much fuel economy. Amerigo further pointed to the fact that its trailer was also designed to ride super low for good towing dynamics compared to a typical towable. Another sweet part is that the Amerigo stands only seven feet tall and was a touch over 16 feet long, so the company said it could fit in a standard American garage.

Every FG-16 came standard with a dinette in the rear of the trailer and a lounge up front. In the middle sat a three-burner stove plus oven, a 75-pound ice box, a 20-gallon water tank, a stainless steel sink, two propane tanks, an awning, and an electric water pump. Most other things were options. If you wanted, you were able to upgrade the ice box for a refrigerator, get a better stove, add a furnace, add air-conditioning, and add a battery. Even carpet was an optional feature. The trailer never had a true bathroom, but there was the option to have a toilet and a small black tank in the closet up front.

Sadly, due to the lack of documentation from Amerigo, it’s unknown how many FG-16s were sold, but the total number is believed to be low. It’s believed the company ceased production sometime in the 1970s or 1980s. Gardner continued to build RVs under his other brand, including fiberglass mini motorhomes. The Amerigo name was revived briefly for a couple of years in the early 1990s for a new hard-sided pop-out trailer concept. Gardner’s other RV concerns, including Gardner-Pacific and Sunrader, never got further than the early 1990s either.

Today’s Surviving FG-16s

These companies may be long gone, but surviving examples are a testament to just how long fiberglass can last. It’s not hard to find an FG-16 for sale in various locales around America.

While Amerigo might have been right on the money about its longevity claims, the same cannot be said for the interiors of these campers. Decades of being used and abused by families can wear out a camper’s interior. Unsurprisingly, pretty much any Amerigo FG-16 that you see for sale today has been renovated.

I’ve found a handful of different renovated FG-16s for sale, but I’ve taken a liking to this 1973 model from Ohio. I love how the person who restored this one cleaned up the exterior and left it gloriously vintage. From the outside, this rig looks like a time capsule and I bet it turns heads whenever it pulls into a campground.

But the interior looks like that of a trailer you could buy new today. Check it out:

The seller has some commentary on what you’re looking at here:

We have loved this camper and have had many great adventures. It is lightweight at approximately 1700 lbs. Appliances include AC (works great), propane heater with thermostat, propane refrigerator, propane stove, and electric hot water heater.

Table folds down into bed-surprising comfortable! Plenty of storage under seats and overhead. Closet can also be used as a restroom, has fan vent, and comes with “Port-a-Potty” self contained system. Sun awning is in great condition as well!

We have previously run off-grid with our solar battery bank (not included) or use your generator, or just plug into a 110 shore power and water! It is ready to plug in and go!

The trailer’s original layout was largely retained with a lounge up front and a dinette in the rear with the center space taken up for cooking. It appears that this trailer was a high-option model from the factory and it did have a toilet up front. Whoever renovated the camper deleted the toilet and put sealed up the sewage exit. The toilet room is now a closet, but it’s noted that you can take the shelves out and put a cassette toilet in there to restore mostly original function.

The seller wants all of this for a price of $10,500, which seems fair for what appears to be a quality restoration job. If that’s a bit too rich for you or if Lancaster, Ohio isn’t close enough, there’s another for sale in Pinsonfork, Kentucky for just $4,000. The remodel job on this one used wood to create a completely different vibe.

The quality of the work done here doesn’t seem as good. The air-conditioner is a residential window unit and was tossed into a hole it might be too small for. The heater appears to be a cheap space heater. But hey, it’s just $4k, which gives you a lot of room to fix it up however you like.

It looks like no matter which one of these you might find in your part of the nation, you should be getting a cool little vintage camper for you, yourself, and a kid. These things don’t have truly luxurious features like huge televisions, full bathrooms, tablet integrations, connected everything, or Starlink, but that’s great. It’s also not built out of the cheapest materials known to exist, which is even better. Forget buying a new RV. Park one of these up at your local state park and just enjoy a nice weekend with your spouse or your kids. These little Amerigos are perfect vehicles to create memories like that.

So, I continue to champion these vintage fiberglass campers. Sure, you don’t get a warranty and good luck getting a dealership to work on it. But new rigs don’t have charm like this!