What is this vehicle?

Becky

Becky

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Becky
While hiking at Mt. Rainier National Park a couple of weeks ago, we saw this vehicle in the parking lot. It had Swiss license plates, cute stickers saying "Suisse" and such. It looks armored, but was definitely civilian, and parked in with the other hikers' cars in the day lot. When we returned, it was gone.

Shipping that thing over here would be horrendously expensive, I would think. Do the Swiss drive around in these things in the mountains? It looked like an assault vehicle of some sort.



 

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May or may not be on an Unimog chassis, (there's a less expensive IVECO chassis as well.) but yeah, it's an off-road RV. Shipping these days is dirt cheap.
 
Interesting. Why the heck would someone need one of those? Oh wait ... this is a pilot forum ... :D
 
Becky said:
Interesting. Why the heck would someone need one of those? Oh wait ... this is a pilot forum ... :D
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To go RV camping up in the mountains which is 95% of what Switzerland is made of.
 
Henning said:
To go RV camping up in the mountains which is 95% of what Switzerland is made of.
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I'm no expert, but that seems to go way beyond what you'd need to "camp" unless there were hostile insurgents in the area.
 
Becky said:
I'm no expert, but that seems to go way beyond what you'd need to "camp" unless there were hostile insurgents in the area.
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It's a lot less than the motor homes you see here. That box on the back is just a camper box, and the chassis a simple 4x4 true 'all terrain' chassis set up to ford streams and climb rocks.
 
Becky said:
Interesting. Why the heck would someone need one of those? Oh wait ... this is a pilot forum ... :D
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Why does anyone need a GA aircraft, or for that matter a car fancier than a 98' camery?


Mogs are very cool, the frames flex, really nicely built, I almost bought a 4 door pickup style one, fresh white paint, light bar, leather, etc etc. Just already have enough toys and the dirt slow highway speed killed it for me, still a heck of a lot of vehicle for the price.

Somewhat like this
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'Mogs have a kind of rabid following around the world. UN uses them for third world access. Not much value on the paved world we live in but once you get to Uganda or Mozambique, you'll be damn glad you are riding a 'mog.
 
If it were me, I'd build a camper on a deuce and a half chassis. (aka Army M35 2 1/2 ton truck.)
 
Looks much like a Hotshot firefighter crew buggy. Not enough windows though.
 
Sac Arrow said:
If it were me, I'd build a camper on a deuce and a half chassis. (aka Army M35 2 1/2 ton truck.)
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This is basically the European version of just that. The Unimog serves the same purpose for the German army.
 
Becky said:
I'm no expert, but that seems to go way beyond what you'd need to "camp" unless there were hostile insurgents in the area.
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Or, you're Walter White and you're relocating to the PNW.
 
We have some local roads that call for that type of suspension.

Not sure what they use now, but they used to have a 21 gear transmission
18 forward, 3 reverse (2 stick).

Shipping from Rotterdam to Bayonne and reverse is cheaper than buying and selling an RV for a 6 month trip.
 
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Becky said:
I'm no expert, but that seems to go way beyond what you'd need to "camp" unless there were hostile insurgents in the area.
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Not much use for that. It's not armored.

pbramlett said:
Ive always wanted one of these



http://earthroamer.com/
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Bill (founder of EarthRoamer) was our neighbor for many years. Made some money on AOL stock and bailed out of telecom to continue what he'd been doing in the driveway of the condos we lived in at the time, build cool off-road camper trucks.

His first truck was a Dodge and he welded in a standard camper to the bed. He took it to Mexico for vacation and road testing and learned a lot.

Dodge made it fine. The welds, not so much.

Great story of him not having much cash with him and finding a totally run down old gas station and an old Mexican guy who had a welder in his shop when the washboard and rough road busted the welds that were holding the camper in. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Mexico.

Hard to describe in text but the language barrier was insurmountable so he pointed at what he needed and then managed to convey that he needed to know the price to re-weld it.

The old guy wrote a number in the dirt with a stick and added a whole bunch of zeros. Bill's heart fell. He didn't have that much cash on him. Old guy crossed a bunch of zeros off of the end of the number and looks up and winks and grins.

After that trip, Bill started the design of what became the first commercial version. Seems like he's done well.
 
The one in the picture is built on a recent commercial unimog, probably the model available until about 5 years ago. Those are quite pricey.

About 30-35 years ago, the german army surplussed a bunch of the trucks pictured in the attachment.

They are known as 'funkkoffer' (best translated into 'communications box') designed to carry racks of radios and spools of wire. You could pick them up from the government for very little money. The radio body was very sturdy and easily converted into a compact camper. The military versions had a rather thirsty gasoline engine, but swapping in the diesel from a W123 (E-class) benz was a reasonably straightforward job.
Back before the islamists took over all of the countries around the southern tier of the mediterranean, taking one of those trucks down across the sahara or to ethiopia was a fairly common excursion for school-teachers on sabattical.
 

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