THE LUXURIOUS COLONIAL II 1956
who smashed them up on Top Gear. I have no idea what the balance is between this love and loathing of the modern caravan, or what percentage of the population finds caravan sites, some with restaurants and hot tubs along with “toilet facilities”, as off-putting as brash, harshly lit supermarkets plonked down in historic high streets. There is little doubt , though, that for the past 50 or 60 years, the caravan has been a reflection, as if from panels of gleaming white fibreglass, of British taste, class, aspiration and holidaymaking.
When Toad in The Wind in the Willows took up caravanning, he and his chums, Rat and Mole, idled along narrow by-lanes beside grassy downs and camped on daisy-strewn meadows. Their red-wheeled home-on-wheels was painted canary yellow picked out in green and white. Its quaint and cosy interior was a thing, in no particular order, of wooden lockers, sardines, potted lobster, bacon, a cooking stove, jam and dominoes. If everything had its allotted place, the aesthetic of Toad’s gentleman-gypsy caravan was as different from a popular modern motorway caravan as a baroque Caravaggio is from a birthday card.
Toad, of course, quickly gave up his caravan for a powerful motor car, and it was cars with big, lowrevving engines that towed a new generation of hefty post-horse caravans, all oak panelling, clerestory windows, heavy-duty crockery and Tudor glazing at up to 30mph along pre-war British roads.
Streamlining became all the vogue in the 1930s. Caravan manufacturers followed suit not for fashion’s sake but because it meant faster and more stable vehicles. In 1932, Eccles Caravans of Birmingham entered the Monte Carlo Rally with one of its four-berth designs riding behind a six-cylinder Hillman Wizard. Averaging 24mph from Glasgow to Monte Carlo, the Eccles team completed the course in 35th place, and were sixth among 35 British entries.
A year later, and in a spirit of determined modernity, Fleming Williams Car Cruisers of Hayes, Middlesex, published a brochure celebrating the first caravan to use the new “National Highway between Cologne and Düsseldorf.” With the advent of small, popular cars from the late 1920s, Fleming Williams was also among firms offering lightweight 10ft caravans made of “steam exploded, hard-pressed fibre”. If an Austin 7 were to have a go at continental caravanning, it was essential to keep weight down – but it was just as important to keep up appearances.
“One decent suit is quite enough as a rule”, was the advice given to gentlemen attempting to pack lightly – although they would also need to find room for a mackintosh along with a bathing costume. A chap didn’t want to be caught out. A lavatory tent was available at £2 10s. Eccles had offered these from 1927 with folding oak seats. Suitably equipped, the great British caravanner toured Dorset and Deutschland, Sutherland and the Sahara Desert until caravans made way for troop carriers.
The outbreak of mass British caravanning occurred in the wake of the Second World War. Fresh from service as an aircraft electrician with the Fleet Air Arm, Sam Alper founded Alperson Products in Stratford, east London. Using surplus wartime components, including Spitfire wheels, brakes and suspension, he built his first caravan, the Rover. It was a decent try, but as Alper quickly realised, it was too heavy. What the post-war market needed was a cheap and light caravan. As the new Elizabethan age dawned, Alper launched the Sprite, an 11ft, fourberther weighing just half a ton and priced at £199, or about £6,500 today.
Much snobbery accompanied the Sprite’s launch. Despite six years of war and continuing ration book austerity, this period also saw the unveiling of the latest two-tone Colonial II from Carlight Caravans of Sleaford, the “RollsRoyce” of the trade. Along with lead crystal glassware and Wedgwood bone china crockery, the Colonial II featured a sideboard dressing unit with glasslined recesses for handkerchiefs, ties, cosmetics and hair and make-up brushes. The Colonial II cost £1,675, slightly more than the price of an average new house. A car with at least a three-litre engine was needed to tow it.
While Carlight produced lighter, more streamlined and even white caravans until the end of the century, it was Alper who caught the spirit of the times. His Sprite went on to become the most popular of all British caravans. Although bigger and more comprehensively equipped than when Nat King Cole, Doris Day and Bing Crosby topped the UK charts, the Sprite remains Britain’s best-selling caravan in 2021.
Although cheap, the original Sprite was rugged and rode safely. In 1952, Alper took a caravan journalist on a 10,019-mile high-speed jaunt through 24 European countries in 34 days, a Sprite bowling along behind his 3.5litre Mk IV Jag. When the revolutionary BMC Mini arrived in 1959, Alper had his Mini-friendly Sprite 400 (400kg) ready for sale the next summer, one of them tearing around the Snetterton racetrack at 45mph behind a Mini for 24 hours.
Light beechwood furniture, plain white hardboard walls and easy-to-wipe surfaces gave the Sprite light and up-tothe-minute interiors. Alper’s designers headed to the annual Ideal Home Show to keep up with popular fads. By 1960, Alper’s new Newmarket factory was building a touring caravan every six minutes, while cheap fuel, rising incomes, longer paid holidays and easy hire-purchase encouraged the sale of more ambitious models.
In 1964, and before the imposition of the 70mph speed limit, Sprite’s chief engineer, John Riseborough, barrelled a Sprite Musketeer along at 102.2mph behind a shark-like Jensen CV-8 at Duxford Aerodrome (you can see for yourself on YouTube).
As fake wood Formica, bright orange seat cushions, mustard floor coverings and large-print green and orange curtains made their entertaining debut in the interiors of Sprite caravans, 23-yearold Liz Firmin drove an Opal model from London to Rome behind an Alfa Romeo 1750 saloon. Between stops on the autostrada she averaged 70mph with a top speed of 92mph. It was best not be inside the caravan trying to rustle up lunch at the time.
In the era of Carry on Behind, Vauxhall Chevettes, The Likely Lads and polyester nylon fitted sheets, Alper tried to get a growing caravan-buying public to venture into the world of futuristic design. Experimental ideas by Ogle Design’s Tom Karen (of Bond Bug and Raleigh Chopper fame), including a
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