{"id":191,"date":"2007-06-22T10:59:27","date_gmt":"2007-06-22T16:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davintosh.com\/2007\/06\/22\/its-five-o-clock-somewhere\/"},"modified":"2007-06-22T10:59:27","modified_gmt":"2007-06-22T16:59:27","slug":"its-five-o-clock-somewhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/2007\/06\/22\/its-five-o-clock-somewhere\/cars\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Five O-Clock Somewhere!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The boys &amp; 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!<\/p>\n<p><img src='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/5_o-clock_somewhere2_lo.jpg' alt='5_o-clock_somewhere2_lo.jpg' \/><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;ve spent a goodly amount of time on the Ford and the trailer. The finish was gorgeous. It didn&#8217;t appear that the boat had spent much time in the water. There wasn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;t sound like he knew much about it&#8217;s background, and with the dearth of information I&#8217;ve been able to find on the web, there weren&#8217;t a lot of them built. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tincantourists.com\/classified\/showproduct.php?product=929&#038;sort=2&#038;cat=last14&#038;page=1\">only other reference<\/a> I found online was of another unit for sale somewhere in Arizona. They described it as a &#8220;1953 Ford commissioned Golden Anniversary Boat camper&#8221;. It was followed by this information;<\/p>\n<ul>\nOur friend Nate found this many years ago in the desert&#8230;..<br \/>\nCurrently, we are researching this with assistance from The Benson Ford Research Center&#8230;..<br \/>\nThis little golden gem had a fiberglass boat on top which blew off in a storm and cracked<br \/>\nNate still has the boat for a template&#8230;..<br \/>\nNate saw one like this at an auto show many years ago &#8211; he believes Ford either manufactured it or had it commissioned for their Golden Anniversary around 1953<br \/>\nWe have never seen one like this before &#8211; it is made of fiberglass with a gold gelcoat finish!<br \/>\nIt has a rear wooden kitchen behind the &#8216;tailgate&#8217;<br \/>\nSimilar in design to a Kom-Pack boat camper with the exception of the golden color of the fiberglass gelcoat<br \/>\nWe believe that this is one of a handful of boat campers commissioned by Ford Motor Co. to commemorate the 50th Annniversary in 1953<br \/>\nWe also believe they were made to probably be displayed in dealer showrooms along with the 1953 Ford station wagons&#8230;<br \/>\nWe believe this design was copied for the Kom-Pack boat campers produced in Oregon<br \/>\nKom-Pack began production after 1953&#8230;<br \/>\nThat company closed production after just two years<br \/>\nThis needs complete restoration &#8211; but it appears to be very rare&#8230;<br \/>\nResearch is ongoing into the identification of this little gem!\n<\/ul>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><a href='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/tincantourist_3.jpg' title='tincantourist_3.jpg'><img src='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/tincantourist_3.thumbnail.jpg' alt='tincantourist_3.jpg' \/><\/a>  <a href='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/tincantourist_2.jpg' title='tincantourist_2.jpg'><img src='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/tincantourist_2.thumbnail.jpg' alt='tincantourist_2.jpg' \/><\/a>  <a href='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/tincantourist_1.jpg' title='tincantourist_1.jpg'><img src='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/tincantourist_1.thumbnail.jpg' alt='tincantourist_1.jpg' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/5_o-clock_somewhere1.jpg' title='5_o-clock_somewhere1.jpg'><img src='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/5_o-clock_somewhere1.thumbnail.jpg' alt='5_o-clock_somewhere1.jpg' \/><\/a> <a href='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/5_o-clock_somewhere2.jpg' title='5_o-clock_somewhere2.jpg'><img src='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/5_o-clock_somewhere2.thumbnail.jpg' alt='5_o-clock_somewhere2.jpg' \/><\/a> <a href='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/5_o-clock_somewhere3.jpg' title='5_o-clock_somewhere3.jpg'><img src='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/5_o-clock_somewhere3.thumbnail.jpg' alt='5_o-clock_somewhere3.jpg' \/><\/a><br \/>\n<a href='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/5_o-clock_somewhere4.jpg' title='5_o-clock_somewhere4.jpg'><img src='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/5_o-clock_somewhere4.thumbnail.jpg' alt='5_o-clock_somewhere4.jpg' \/><\/a> <a href='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/5_o-clock_somewhere5.jpg' title='5_o-clock_somewhere5.jpg'><img src='\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/5_o-clock_somewhere5.thumbnail.jpg' alt='5_o-clock_somewhere5.jpg' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Update: <\/strong>I was browsing through the Hemmings Auto Blog last night &amp; found that they had seen two others like it recently. One was on the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.hemmings.com\/index.php\/2008\/01\/22\/one-from-scottsdale\/\">auction block<\/a> at <a href=\"http:\/\/goodingco.com\/\">Gooding &amp; Co.<\/a> along with a classy &#8217;52 Ford Ranch Wagon. That rig sold for $82,500, which, according to the Hemmings post, &#8220;is about $70,000 above average for the wagon alone.&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.hemmings.com\/index.php\/2008\/01\/23\/answering-the-kompak-challenge\/\">The other one<\/a> 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 &amp; Co. say there are only 14 of these campers still in existence. I don&#8217;t know that there is a huge demand for these things, but it seems that it wouldn&#8217;t be too difficult for a fiberglass fabricator to replicate these campers &mdash; even make variants that match other cars&#8217; rear ends. But I guess the historicity of these campers is part of their appeal. <\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s not a bad thing, is it? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The boys &amp; 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cars"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}