Rear view mirror
Back in 1998, a rear lounge campervan was quite a novelty. The Bessacarr E370 was, perhaps, a ’van before its time…
A Bessacarr that was ahead of its time
For the May 1988 issue, your Editor (then a lowly freelance road tester) took the wheel of a then-new Bessacarr E370, a van conversion based on the medium-wheelbase Fiat Ducato, which was already a popular base vehicle. While its sister model, the E350, adopted a popular and proven floorplan with a front lounge and rear galley, plus a corner washroom, (very like the AutoSleeper Symbol, in fact), the E370 was quite a brave foray into the unknown for a major manufacturer. For Bessacarr was, back then, a separate brand within the Swift Group and its newest campervan sported a rear lounge.
Priced at £25,644 (that’s the equivalent of £59,842 today), the E370 was a modest 5.19m long (haven’t motorhomes grown in the past two decades?), and came with a 2-litre petrol engine as standard. It seems a very long time since we last featured anything that supped from the green pumps but our quoted test figure of 26.7mpg doesn’t sound bad. We described it as having “performance and refinement that are hard to ignore.” It saved you £1,251 against the alternative 1.9-litre turbo-diesel, too.
It was the layout that was of interest here, though. “It’s all very conventional, and a design that’s always been popular in small coachbuilts, so why others don’t do the same in the high-top market is a mystery,” we opined. Just as with many of today’s rear lounge campervans, the appeal here was to find a nice view (whether on a campsite or for a lunch stop), back up and fling open the rear doors. Despite its modest size, the E370 had room to put your feet up, while its lounge could be converted into a 1.83m by 1.22m double bed.
Sadly, despite our enthusiasm ( we liked it so much that the Editor nabbed it again for a holiday in France!), and the fact that a similar model later joined Swift’s Mondial range (same ’van, different décor), the E370 was always outsold by the more conventional E350 and it was many years before Swift tried anything like it again, this time with the Rhythm model under the Autocruise brand. We searched the web for a used example for sale but only found an E350 (a 2002 model with 50k miles for £19,990 at 4 Front Car Sales).
Of course, it’s a different story with the cover star of that issue – the Murvi Morello, which had just scooped the Caravan Club Design Award for the second time. This (front lounge) campervan has been in continuous production, evolving along the way, since the 1980s. The Morello went on to win awards with even greater regularity than Lewis Hamilton taking the F1 world crown. And still, despite rivals mimicking ( if rarely beating) its design, Murvi has yet to ever offer a rear lounge layout.