We have been covering motorhomes, motorhomes and caravans for years. We love them and we know Motor1.com readers around the world love them too. Most of the time we see relatively normal RVs with inventive and unique features. But sometimes we come across something different. Really different.
That’s what we celebrate here. We’ve scoured our dedicated motorhome news category to find the weirdest, craziest, or just the coolest motorhomes we’ve written about. And you know what? There are so many great campers in our archives that it’s really hard to choose just a handful. As such, we had to exclude limited edition releases from dedicated companies. Everything here is a bespoke creation, and in some cases, Customs is an excellent understatement.
We scoured our archives for interesting campers. Here’s what we found, presented in no particular order. If you want to know more about these special machines, click on the header of each section to read our original article.
Is it the wildest of them all? It’s debatable, but we can’t imagine a more extreme custom RV project than fusing the fuselage of a vintage Douglas R4D into an international semi-truck. It took a year to create and only cost $20,000…and a whole lot of elbow grease from its owner and builder who calls it a labor of love.
We discovered the Atomic Camper in 2018, which had been built from the ground up a few years before. The mad scientist behind this unique travel trailer designed and created it while recovering from injuries sustained in a plane crash. It is unknown if this experience influenced the design. But nothing says invincible quite like living in something that looks like a nuclear bomb.
At a glance, this big black motorhome doesn’t look noticeably different from a standard Class A motorhome. In fact, this is an epic school bus conversion where the only thing that rest is the engine, cabin and chassis. Even then, the frame is modified to accommodate an additional axle. Everything else is made from scratch, including the sides, the roof, and a workshop big enough to repair snowmobiles.
This amazing rig is the inspiration for this list of cool and crazy campers, and crazy cool doesn’t get much better than that. A classic Kenworth is the base for this black and chrome combo, but the Airstream Caravan isn’t just bolt-on rear. The level of customization on this version is off the scale, from modifications to the truck itself to a walkway connecting the cabin to the camper.
No vehicle or trailer on this list is ordinary, but if you saw this classic 1968 Longhorn C20 on the street, you wouldn’t suspect it was more than a beautifully restored pickup truck with vintage decor. . However, it’s never a problem to light a campfire when this truck is there thanks to a legit flamethrower installed in the longhorn’s skull.
This oddly stylish travel trailer is a concept from a China-based designer with an organic, whale-inspired exterior. In transport mode, it buttons up for easy towing. But with multiple built-in pop-ups and slides, the trailer expands to provide surprising space. At the end of 2021, there were tentative plans to put it into production. However, we have yet to hear any updates on the progress.
Smyth Performance has pickup bed conversion kits for several vehicles, but the Beetle Utes are arguably the coolest of them all. That wasn’t enough for the owner of this VW, who had an unused fifth wheel in his garage. He designed and built this pop-up caravan from scratch specifically for use with the Beetle and it works amazingly well. In an interview with Motor1.comthe automaker also revealed that its unique camping rig gets 30 mpg on the highway.
Big deal, just another classic Chevy pickup with a mattress topper replacing the bed, right? Look more closely. The cabin is also gone, leaving the driver to navigate through a forward-facing windshield. Rumor has it that this was a rare motorhome conversion made by a company in the 1960s, but we have not been able to verify this claim.
The Mitsubishi Fuso is a great platform on which to build a self-driving motorhome. Typically you don’t find one with gullwing doors, but it was done by the builder here to bring the outside in. It’s a functional design that trades aesthetics for functionality, but it’s certainly creative.
Speaking of functionality and creativity, here is another repurposed semi truck for RV service, but with a twist. It is a modified fifth wheel mounted to the frame at the rear, but there is no forward passage. Instead, there’s room in the middle to carry a small car perpendicular to the truck. We’ve seen small garages on extremely large RVs, but this cool creation in a smaller package certainly offers a new alternative to flatbed towing.
It takes serious vision to turn the scourge of motorists into something great. From the outside, this big old Volvo B10MA looks like a typical city bus, ready to move masses of passengers around the city. With all those seats gone, however, there’s unbelievable space for a custom motorhome. The entire front part of the bus is devoted to the kitchen. The rear houses the bathroom, a large office and an isolated bedroom.
Okay, that last motorhome isn’t real. But it still qualifies because it’s custom built with awesome features you wouldn’t expect in a scale model RV, let alone one built from Lego. There are two functional bedroom slides, storage bins around the base, a deployable back porch, and that’s exactly what you see from the outside. With the roof removed, the interior is fully equipped with beds, bathroom, kitchen, etc. If you could shrink down to Lego size, this motorhome is rightfully ready for off-the-brick adventure.