Car Cruiser Owners Club

The Car Cruiser Owners Club was set up in 1963 so that owners of this now Classic Caravan could meet together.

The club is small with about 25 families.  2003 was the 40th year of the club

There are normally about 6 Rallies each year, located at different places around the country.

 2011's rallies are listed below.

13th - 16thMay

Suffolk

 17th - 20th June

Rutland Water 

 8th - 10th July

Stoke Bruerne

Northants

15th & 16th July

Cottesmore Steam Railway

Rutland 

23rd - 25th September

Hallaton Sports Ground,

Leicestershire

Happy Caravaning!

 More specific details to follow.

For more information about the make of caravan or about the club and membership please contact:

David Fletcher
21 Tabard Gardens
Newport Pagnell
Buckinghamshire
MK16 0LX

(01908) 61 85 64

Email :carcruiserclub@gmail.com

Information about Car Cruiser.

Car Cruiser was a company which started by producing lightweight tourers, and these were 'streamlined'. Streamlined tourers were a rarity in the early days, when most manufacturers were still producing trailer vans bearing a resemblance to their horse-drawn predecessors. Angela (named after the founder's daughter) was one such concern, its designs remaining essentially unchanged for a number of years, but eventually bowing to fashion in the 1930s with a very interesting streamlined design.

Major Fleming-Williams, Car Cruiser's founder, had been an artist in World War 1, when his illustrations had appeared in many of the leading newspapers. But his heart wasn't in drawing: his real interest lay in the designs of early aeroplanes (he was later nicknamed 'Streamline Bill'). Streamlined planes gave him ideas about how this principle might be applied to caravans. First, in 1917, he built a motor van, almost the blueprint of the first Car Cruiser design, which he made in 1920. Some years later, he was asked to build another ... and, by 1924, he had a caravan factory.

The caravans were constructed with a spar roof with canvas stretched over. This method was still in use up to 1931, and although durability wasn't a problem, condensation was! To remedy this, Williams introduced a double-panelled roof with an air cavity between. Plywood lower panels were used, and canvas above the waistline, thus achieving a lightweight van and also the Car Cruiser shape which was to prove so distinctive. The chassis, like those of many other makers of the time, was constructed of wood, with very little steel involved, and was built in-house. The Car Cruiser range sold so well that the company eventually moved to larger premises in Hayes, Middlesex. Here production was stepped up to meet demand, as the pastime of caravanning was becoming increasingly popular.

(Source: The History of Caravaning.)