davintosh

The boys & I went to the AutoMania car show downtown last night, and while there were lots of impressive machines there, one rig that was a real standout was this 1954 Ford Delivery Wagon pulling a camper. But not just any camper; it had a boat for a roof!

Gary and Joyce Bortscheller of Elk Point are the owners of this rig. Gary runs a body shop in South Sioux City, NE; he must’ve spent a goodly amount of time on the Ford and the trailer. The finish was gorgeous. It didn’t appear that the boat had spent much time in the water. There wasn’t much room inside the camper; the whole thing stood only five feet or so tall, so with the boat on top there was less than 4 feet of headroom. Definitely made only for sleeping inside. The back has a small fridge and storage cubbies, along with a fold-down working surface.

I spoke briefly with Gary, and he said that the trailer was a production piece built by a 3rd party outfit with the cooperation of Ford. Didn’t sound like he knew much about it’s background, and with the dearth of information I’ve been able to find on the web, there weren’t a lot of them built. The only other reference I found online was of another unit for sale somewhere in Arizona. They described it as a “1953 Ford commissioned Golden Anniversary Boat camper”. It was followed by this information;

Our friend Nate found this many years ago in the desert…..
Currently, we are researching this with assistance from The Benson Ford Research Center…..
This little golden gem had a fiberglass boat on top which blew off in a storm and cracked
Nate still has the boat for a template…..
Nate saw one like this at an auto show many years ago – he believes Ford either manufactured it or had it commissioned for their Golden Anniversary around 1953
We have never seen one like this before – it is made of fiberglass with a gold gelcoat finish!
It has a rear wooden kitchen behind the ‘tailgate’
Similar in design to a Kom-Pack boat camper with the exception of the golden color of the fiberglass gelcoat
We believe that this is one of a handful of boat campers commissioned by Ford Motor Co. to commemorate the 50th Annniversary in 1953
We also believe they were made to probably be displayed in dealer showrooms along with the 1953 Ford station wagons…
We believe this design was copied for the Kom-Pack boat campers produced in Oregon
Kom-Pack began production after 1953…
That company closed production after just two years
This needs complete restoration – but it appears to be very rare…
Research is ongoing into the identification of this little gem!

And here are the photos from that ad, followed by the photos I took last night. Click on the thumbnails of my photos for a larger version.

Update: I was browsing through the Hemmings Auto Blog last night & found that they had seen two others like it recently. One was on the auction block at Gooding & Co. along with a classy ’52 Ford Ranch Wagon. That rig sold for $82,500, which, according to the Hemmings post, “is about $70,000 above average for the wagon alone.” Which means someone paid a $70,000 premium for a tiny little camper with a boat on top. A very shiny little camper with a boat on top, but still: Wow.

The other one was spotted with a for sale sign on it, sitting in a parking lot a year or so ago. $6,000 for that one, in fairly rough cosmetic shape. According to that post, the people at Gooding & Co. say there are only 14 of these campers still in existence. I don’t know that there is a huge demand for these things, but it seems that it wouldn’t be too difficult for a fiberglass fabricator to replicate these campers — even make variants that match other cars’ rear ends. But I guess the historicity of these campers is part of their appeal.

This in a way justifies me being such a packrat; I see value in the mundane, and want to keep things when others are ready to pitch them. That’s not a bad thing, is it?

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 10:59 am and is filed under Cars!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.