Roof tent - Added value!

Martin Sigrist
05/29/2025

How do I get the kids to like trips in the classic car? I have a tip: get a sturdy roof gallery and fit a roof tent! It may seem a bit exaggerated, but recently - for the trip to the Salzburgring for the 75th anniversary of the VW Transporter - I borrowed a colleague's roof tent and mounted it on the T1. The fear that the additional weight would contribute to further compromising the already rather adventurous handling at the top end of the Bulli did not materialize. The increased frontal area has also not been particularly noticeable in terms of top speed; the bus is slow in any case, which may "help".

The extra weight is hardly noticeable when driving

Yes, a roof tent, so it passed the first test. How? Oh yes! Of course, how it sleeps is certainly a legitimate question. Well, if you like camping, you won't be unhappy in a roof tent. However, the real advantage of the elevated position is the protection from ground moisture or, in heavy rain, from a stream running through the middle of the tent when camping on a meadow. And in the forest you don't have to worry about roots or stones on the ground in the mountains. And pitching is usually a matter of a few minutes.

A classic for the Trabbi: the "Pension Sachsenruh"

And it creates some dry vestibule space next to the van or, an idea that particularly haunts me, next to the normal car. As already mentioned in an earlier blog , there's a discarded hearse standing around... Sleep upstairs, pack the kitchen in the back and all the stuff you don't think you can manage without.
But you should know that an erected roof tent in a parking lot - at least in Switzerland - is interpreted as camping and is therefore usually prohibited. This often also applies to pop-up roofs on camper vans. Either way, the successful trial run of the roof tent has encouraged me to get one in the foreseeable future. I had my eye on a classic version with fabric, like this one. Incidentally, roof tents were patented as "air camping" in Italy in 1958, from where the idea made its way around the globe.