Vacation in the attic
01/29/2024
Everything is a bit bigger in the USA. Accordingly, what had been known in the GDR since 1956 as the "camping sedan" was also adapted to US standards in the mid-sixties. At the beginning of 1965, Studebaker presented the prototype of a camping attachment for the Lark Wagonaire station wagon, which could be fitted in just 20 minutes without any body modifications and transformed the family freighter into a mobile and accessible vacation home.
This was made possible on the one hand by the large sliding roof above the load compartment, which simply allowed the interfering sheet metal to slide out of the way. Secondly, the McNamee Coach Corporation in El Monte, California, which built the alcove extension for the car manufacturer from Indiana. However, the vacation extension for station wagons did not catch on. This was probably primarily because the load compartment sliding roof never caught on. The situation was quite different for pick-ups: the first camping body for a US flatbed truck was offered as early as 1963 - by Studebaker, incidentally.
