The Touring Caravan by Andrew Jenkinson

Author:Andrew Jenkinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Touring Caravan
ISBN: 9781784420185
Publisher: Osprey Publishing Ltd
Published: 2014-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

The unusual Coventry Steel Lite-line model in 1958 cost £563. Dawtrey, its designer and owner, tragically died in this year – a great loss to the caravan industry.

Explorer 14 (1972), from luxury makers Cheltenham Caravans, was launched to appeal to mid-market buyers and keep Cheltenham going through troubled times. The Explorer brand was dropped in 1974.

FORWARD DESIGN AND LARGE CONCERNS: 1960–80

THE 1950S HAD seen some weird and wonderful designs, some of which worked while others were doomed to failure. In the 1960s and 1970s, the use of GRP increased; insulation improved and glass fibre and polystyrene were used in the roof and sides. Some makers such as Elddis in the 1960s would use tin foil for insulation, while Thomson used mineral wool. Chassis design had also improved, including a new system pioneered by B&B Trailers (who dominated the touring caravan chassis market) known as the Sigma auto reverse system. This meant the driver now didn’t need to reset a reverse catch as was required on the older coupling designs.

All touring caravans by 1972 (apart from most specialist luxury makers such as Carlight, Safari, Stirling and Castleton) would fit pre-painted oven-baked aluminium exterior panels, which gave a long-lasting finish. Front drawbar-mounted gas bottle lockers would be common from 1973 (these were made of GRP) while real wood veneers on medium-priced tourers gave way to new stain-resistant photo veneered finishes.

Gas lighting would be replaced with interior 12-volt lights, while fridges, heaters and ovens were being fitted as standard on more expensive caravans. Glass windows, which were heavy, could break easily and caused condensation, were being slowly phased out with plastic units taking their place. On some luxury makes at the end of the 1970s, mains electrics were added in readiness for electric hook-up points on the ever-improving caravan sites.

The speed limit for towing was raised in the 1960s from 30 mph to 40 mph and by 1973 increased to 50 mph. Caravan road rallying helped develop chassis design: longer drawbars and wider tracks were introduced, improving overall towing stability. Apart from the GRP panels being used in construction by luxury makes, a few manufacturers used special presses to glue the exterior aluminium to the polystyrene core insulation and framing, along with the interior wall board, pressing them together. This was used for the sides and by the mid-1980s it became a common method of constructing most touring caravans. It was known as ‘bonded sandwich’ construction.

This system was strong and light but expensive to produce. By the early 1970s Dormobile, Monolite and Sinclair Gordon had begun to use this method along with imported makes such as the Swedish maker Cabby, who used polyurethane as the wall core instead of polystyrene. By the mid-1970s most up-market caravan floors were insulated and used a sandwich construction with Styrofoam as its core.

The Ci group, formed in 1963 by the merger of Sprite, Eccles and Bluebird implemented a new construction system for 1975. This involved injecting Styrofoam into the walls of its Europa range of tourers. This

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