Fellow CC’er Daniel Stern sent me this today, saying he was trying to post something to the Cohort for the first time. The only thing that caught his eye was the ’61-’62 Dodge Lancer towing this travel trailer. but that’s not what I noticed. What is going on here? Most highly unusual…well, it does say that it’s “revolutionary”.
I noticed right away how close up it is, riding right up on the Lancer’s butt. And I also noticed the twin castering wheels in the back. I thought it might be a two-wheeled version of the one-wheeled bumper-attached utility trailer. Then I looked again, and noticed the frame of the trailer, how it goes around the side of the Lancer and…attaches to its rear wheels! What the? I know that sounds nuts, but that’s what it appears to be doing. And that certainly would be a better place to put the weight than the bumper. Or would it? So much for reducing unsprung weight.
I Googled “El Caminchero” and found this other ad, which confirms it: “Within 2 minutes one can attach to rear wheels or remove”. Unbelievable. This is the first time I’ve ever heard about something like this. I can’t see it in detail, but presumably it has a freely-rotating hub in the attachment.
This is the only thing I can find on the web. Maybe someone can find the original patent. In any case, this is truly mind expanding. I would never have imagined such a type of hitch existed. One does wonder why it appears to not have caught on? Did it affect the car’s ride or handling? Some other issue? Hmm…
Update: here’s a more detailed picture that was left in the comments. And more pictures and the patent drawings are also now in the comments. Thanks!
I can’t find anything else either. Honorbuilt survived, but this must have been one of the worst ideas to make it into prototype stage. Just imagine how the unsprung hitching points shook the travel trailer and its content to pieces, not to mention yanking the rear wheels of the compact car off the pavement with the inertia of tremendous unsprung weight. Hopefully this was an April Fools Day prank.
Good grief, that looks like a physics nightmare. The tailswing on that would wipe out everything in the oncoming lane. Can you imagine the load put on some unsuspecting 13″ tire? Park it in the driveway and use it as a guestroom.
Never mind the load on the 6.50 × 13″ tires…think about the load on the weepy li’l four-wheel 9-inch drum brakes!
I had to use The Google to find Minneapolis, Kansas, It currently has a population of 2,032. No doubt they had a larger population in the 1960’s with all the jobs at that huge trailer factory. 🙂
An example of a solution that generates more problems than it solves. But, it does claim to be “America’s favorite”
I was also about to post something about the claim of being “America’s favorite!”
America’s favorite WHAT?
Certainly not America’s favorite travel trailer, period. Maybe “America’s favorite trailer for compact cars that doesn’t attach to a normal hitch receiver, manufactured in Kansas.”
Today there would be an asterisk or a footnote number next to that claim. 😀
There’s an ad available on eBay here:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-1960s-Honorbuilt-Camper-Travel-Trailer-EL-CAMINCHERO-Advertisement-/254471104356
It also shows the Valiant.
As for the two-minute attachment…? What Paul said about the free rotating hub… I’m imagining some sort of device attaching to the (perhaps extended studs pressed into the axles)… maybe a bit like the locking wire wheel cover adapters that GM used to add to cars, but sturdier and with a bearing, maybe? And once this sort of adapter is installed, THEN it becomes a 2-minute hitch up.
As for “is it a better place to attach than the bumper?”, I can’t really speak to that from an engineering standpoint. But just a gut feeling is that it does make some sense in the same way that a gooseneck or 5th wheel trailer hitch is considered better than a frame mount hitch on a pickup truck.
This is a quote from https://camperreport.com/travel-trailer-vs-5th-wheel-23-things-consider-buying/ : “The 5th wheel clearly wins this debate. The 5th wheel design puts more of the weight centered between the axles on the towing vehicle, and brings the center of mass forward on the towed vehicle. This makes towing a 5th wheel much more stable and secure.”
Edit: But a 5th wheel or gooseneck has a pivot point and this obviously does not. More I think about it, this is somewhat similar to the single caster wheel trailers that Paul wrote about here: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/vintage-snapshots-and-photography/vintage-snapshot-of-the-day-what-ever-happened-to-the-fifth-wheel-trailer/
A bit about the company (December 1963, Salina paper), but not the Caminchero in particular—I’ll see what else I can find:
Ok. “America’s favorite” was not this contraption, but the El Dorado brand pickup camper. I did see tons of them around in the 1960’s. Dad would occasionally rent one from our local GMC dealer. Now that I think about it, the Ford dealer down the street from us also sold El Dorado campers. They were missing out on selling the El Caminchero – Falcon combo.
Reminds me a bit of the Kozy Kar Kamper (the acronym wasn’t the only thing ill-fated about that venture).
An Edsel rocking one of those popped up online several places last year.
https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2019/06/04/hemmings-finds-of-the-day-1959-edsel-ranger-and-kozy-traveler-kar-kamper/
Wow. I could just see the salesman telling the prospective buyer, “And you simply remove the trunklid when you want to mount the camper, and then reinstall it when you get back from your adventures!”
And if that wasn’t enough of a dealbreaker, the floor of the trunk served as the floor of the camper. That might’ve been a scary place to stand, if the car was regularly driven in the rust belt.
Photo from the side (eBay) helps us see what’s going on. Is there something permanent you both on to rear wheel hubs, that this (2-minute) quickly attaches to as needed?
Perfect! I knew I’d get some help from my friends! 🙂
Yes, clearly the hubs attach to the wheels with the lug nuts, and then there”s obviously a quick-coupler to attach the frame to them.
Fascinating. A crazy idea, and I suspect it didn’t catch on for a good reason, or two. i can’t help but wonder if there was something that forced them to take it off the market, other than just poor sales. maybe it cause dangerous handling, or affected the ride of the car too much?
Thank you, George! Your picture wasn’t visible when I commented but you’ve verified my speculation about mounting points. The arm between the bumper and trailer also makes sense.
A somewhat similar, and contemporary, set-up is described in my comment below.
The arm between the bumper and trailer also makes sense.
Not to me! if that’s another mount, I see gobs of trouble, as the body of the car is going to be bobbing up and down over bumps and undulations, but the wheels aren’t. You cannot mount this thing rigidly to both the sprung car body and the unsprung wheels simultaneously. I thought we were seeing the other side of the frame to the far wheel, but it does seem a bit high for that. I cannot imagine how that would work, to mount it to both the body and wheels.
Update: looking at it again, that clearly is the far side frame member we see. Look at how much higher the trailer’s far side wheel is; it’s on a bit of a slope. The odds of the other side being perfectly shadowed by the front side one are way too small.
“You cannot mount this thing rigidly to both the sprung car body”
I never said it was rigid. 🙂 There’s no way it could be mounted rigidly without gobs of problems. I was thinking more in terms of a secondary attachment in the same thought vein as the safety chains used with pulling trailers behind pickups, etc..
Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how that would work in turns!
Do the things that attach to the rear wheels telescope in and out, or do the wheels in the back swivel?
Easy; the trailer wheels caster (swivel). Makes backing up a breeze.
Attached to a ChevyII—-and hard-to-see drawing of interior plan:
Interesting, and a concept still at work.
Like everyone else, I’m curious about mounting. Were the lug nuts removed and the attachment for the trailer then placed between the wheel and the newly replaced lug nuts? Was it a hub mount – and, if so, how? This is quite interesting.
The concept is still alive but only for low speed work by street and highway departments. Pull pavers (i.e., not self-propelled) are chained to the tailgate while arms rest inside the wheels. While more for stability, the wheels are providing the mounting point. The arms have casters that will run along the inside perimeter of the wheel. Only problem is the steel casters wearing the wheels and deforming them.
As I said earlier, undauntedly a freely-rotating hub was mounted to the wheels with the lug nuts. And then there would be some kind of quick connect coupling to the hub. Otherwise it’s not a “2 minute” job.
Being familiar with trailering, multiple trailer sizes with multiple vehicles, and having installed a few of my own receiver hitches, I can only shake my head at this. An answer to a question nobody asked. The time spent messing with the hub installation and the two side alignment process of coupling and uncoupling would be a pain. Throw in issues with rain, dirt, and a possible flat car tire and the fun really begins. I can only imagine what a blowout at speed on a caster wheel would be like, it would probably rip the wheel off the trailer.
But, I do recall when these briefly became America’s favorite, until the blown bearings in the hub attachments and the strange driving dynamics of what became became a 20′ plus long vehicle with a middle fixed axle brought dishonor to the Honorbuilt Trailer Mfg. Co. Inc. 😉
Dad didn’t know much about campers…….
Sears sold kit houses under the name “Honor-Bilt” till about 1940.
It’s a nice coincidence that they used a Lancer. The toilet seat on the trunk already looks like a 5th-wheel hitch. You could mount a real 5th wheel to the frame and protrude it through the trunk, and the car would look the same.
Early 5th wheel setups that mounted in the rumble seat sometimes had sidebars that looked like this Honorbilt, but they seem to have attached to the running board, not the rear hubs.
Your eyes are playing tricks on you; Lancers did not have spare-tire trunk lids. That lid was on the ’60-’61 Valiant, not the ’62 Valiant nor the ’61-’62 Lancer.
OK, think I’ve got the patent (including a couple variants)–thanks to my friend Sally Sublette (first half):
Patent part two–to me, looks like the “El Caminchero” setup:
I was hoping CC’s Resource Librarian Sally S. might come through for us. Tell her thanks!
Fascinating stuff. This guy was really looking for new solutions to the problem of sagging springs, which really was a common problem then when cars were overloaded.
Very happy to be useful Paul–love these challenges! I see Mr. McClive still working on the idea, 30 years later (1993):
I think one of those roof rack mounted fifth wheel trailers would make more sense.This thing looks even smaller that the average Shasta or Scottie of the period with the lost space at the front and as previously noted the hitch setup creates more problems than it solves.
No wonder we’ve never seen one of these before.
WTF?
That is just awesome in the worst way. I don’t know where to begin.
That basically makes the rear wheels weigh hundreds of pounds each.
The rear end pivot would be insane. If you think an early 911 has oversteer, try that!
Plus, wouldn’t it shake itself to pieces being attached BEFORE the suspension?
That really made my day. Things were so interesting when there were no rules.
You could watch an atomic mushroom cloud with Ray-Bans on, ride your bike behind the DDT sprayer-truck, watch lakes catch on fire and now this!
Thanks for another terrific posting.
I would imagine that such a non pivoting trailer would transfer any side wind buffering to the front wheels creating some less than desired handling. The guy in the Valiant should have bought a Rambler with reclining seats and saved his time and money spent on this nightmare.
Reminds me of how the trailer on my John Deere 316 garden tractor (circa ’86) works. (could be a candidate for a sod-side classic). No sprung suspension on the tractor but the trailer mounts to points on the frame that allow pivoting up/down only and the trailer has caster mounted wheels. Gotta be a little bit careful making tight turns if close to anything because the rear end of trailer will swing out.
How would that work with an early swing-axle Corvair? Not that I think it would be great with a live-axle car either.
Not very well, if at all. The Corvair was challenged enough as it was; this would have pushed it over the edge, metaphorically and literally.
I was thinking that. An El Caminchero on an early Corvair would take oversteer to a whole new level.
‘El Caminchero’ sounds like it would have been a good name for a car-based pickup version of the AMC Matador. Or a new menu item at Taco Bell……
…and now with that more detailed pic from the eBay ad, we* can clearly see it’s a 1962 Lancer, not a ’61.
Still alive and kicking. Most likely if you’ve ridden an airport shuttle bus, could very well have been an El Dorado.
http://www.eldorado-bus.com/company-overview/
How about that! Nice historical connecting.
I wonder just how many they sold if any, I get paid to tow trailers mostly pull type that attach via a ringfeeder with seperate air hydraulic ABS and electrical couplings they get taken on and off all day about 2 minutes work for each disconnect reconnect operation its a tried and true method with millions of miles of proven safety in operation, but this heath Robison idea would simply never work even for light weight camper type trailers, the loading placed on the wheel studs for a start is beyond spec studs and lug nuts carry no load they simply secure the rim to the hub the load is carried on the rim centre hole/hub centre, this device places extra loading where it isnt meant to be.
Sorry but on some vehicles the load is not carried by the hub centre, the coned nuts clamp the wheel to the hub and carry the load – albeit over a very short portion of the studs. I agree that this crazy device would overload the studs.
You guys have me laughing. Your comments are excellent about the folly of this rig. Thanks for the laughs this morning (February 9, 2020). Tom
NEVER heard of this in my whole life. Obviously long before my time. Just imagine what the DOT would do now if they saw THIS!