Just when I think I’ve reached the bottom of the rabbit hole of weird motorhomes, another creation comes to the surface. If you travel to Pennsylvania, you’ll be in the same state as a magical, rare coach with the heart of a Ford truck. This 1971 Krager Kustom Koach is a fiberglass motorhome meant for the backwoods hunter and their buddies that manages to be so ugly it comes back to being beautiful again.
I’ve frequently said that if you’re looking for a motorhome that doesn’t look boring, set your sights on rigs from the past. Sure, you’ll have to deal with outdated camping equipment and often tired, overworked powertrains, but you’ll almost certainly arrive in style. The 1970s was a great era of experimentation in motorhome design. This is an era that brought the iconic GMC Motorhome, the FMC 2900R, the Ford Condor II, the DayStar, the Barth, the Airstream Argosy Motorhome, and so many more. The 1970s were so crazy for motorhomes that Winnebago teamed up with Orlando Helicopter Airways to create helicopter motorhomes! I’ve written about that one before and perhaps one day it’s worth a revisit.
Anyway, the creations by Krager Kustom Koach were right at home in the 1970s. This motorhome looks bizarre on the outside while being a time capsule of 1970s interior design with its wood finishes and natural colors.
Krager Kustom Koach
As Hemmings writes, perhaps a couple of dozen Krager Kustom Koaches were built, but it’s not exactly known how many. What I can tell you is that there are very few archived listings for these and information about the company that built them is even harder to find. However, there are morsels of information out there.
According to the 2000 book Home On The Road: The Motor Home In America, Krager Kustom Koach was the brainchild of Eugene Krager. The book notes that Krager was an experienced homebuilder. Following the establishment of a niche of Ford and Dodge-based luxury motorhomes, Krager joined a growing field of camper producers looking for their own slice of the pie. Krager Kustom Koach, which abbreviates to KRAE, opened its doors in 1957 in Osseo, Minnesota.
Krager’s first campers were slide-in units that rode in the beds of pickup trucks. These camping units were sold in eight and 10-foot lengths and advertised a contoured top for cleaner aesthetics and better aerodynamics. Krager’s other trick was building its truck campers out of a foam laminate sandwich. This allowed the truck campers to weigh as low as 1,200 pounds. Exact details about how these campers were built are scant, but Krager appears to be one of the only manufacturers to build campers out of foam laminate. However, foam structure does get plenty of use in custom camper builds.
Reportedly, in 1963, Krager got into building the kinds of motorhomes we would classify as Class C coaches today. For $8,495 ($85,422 today), you could buy the Krager Motor Home. This was a 20-foot motorhome with the cab and chassis of a Chevrolet truck and a Krager camper body on the back. Included in the Krager Motor Home were all of the amenities of a home for six people, including a full bathroom, kitchen, and HVAC system.
In 1964, Krager introduced a smaller variant. The 16-foot Krager Kustom Koach was also fully furnished like its larger sibling, but just $7,400, or $73,207 today.
This Krager Kustom Koach
That takes us to 1970 when Krager Kustom Koach was awarded a patent on the design of a motorhome. That motorhome is what you see here today. This iteration of the Krager Kustom Koach eliminates the cab of a donor chassis with a full fiberglass body of Krager design. The fiberglass makes sense, given Krager’s previous experiments with foam laminate. The 1970s were also a time when fiberglass as a camper building material was taking off, so Krager was keeping with the technology of the day.
The 1970s-era Krager Kustom Koach was available in multiple sizes and it seems that the size of your Krager determined the chassis underneath. This 22-foot Krager is a Ford underneath while at least some of the 26-foot Kragers rode on International Harvester chassis. Reportedly, Krager went out of business in 1973, leaving owners concerned about service and replacement parts.
At the heart of this 1971 Krager Kustom Koach is a Ford chassis of some kind. in 1971, Ford says it offered the P-350, P-400, and P-500 commercial chassis to motorhome builders. Those trucks came with engines ranging from a 240 cubic inch six to a 390 cubic inch V8. This Krager Kustom Koach has a Ford 330 cubic inch V8, which wasn’t offered in Ford’s P-Series. It’s unclear whether Krager went with a different chassis, a different engine, or the original engine had been replaced.
Mounted on top of that chassis is a full fiberglass body. The lines of the body sort of make sense if you squint hard enough. There are a lot of styling details up front that just end at the front windows.
The fiberglass appears to be holding up well for its age. There are some waves and some cracks in the fiberglass coating, but no major damage that my eyes can see. It’s unclear how original the body and paint are, but I can tell you that the coach has been cleaned up. The motorhome was for sale on Facebook two years ago in Allentown, Pennsylvania and it looked a bit grungy.
Inside, the Krager is largely a time capsule back to the 1970s. What remains of the motorhome’s carpet is that green shag stuff and many surfaces appear to be finished in faux wood.
Everyone gets to sit in brown leather chairs and the ceiling is some pretty neat quilted material. Even the kitchen is so green. A neat trick about the dinette bench seats is that they’re reversible so that people riding in the motorhome can face forward as it drives down the highway.
The seller notes that you have a full kitchen and a wet bath, but it would appear that the camper looks like an unfinished restoration. The floor is solid, but most of it is missing carpet. Meanwhile, the propane appliances are present but aren’t hooked up. Unclear is what’s going on with the motorhome’s holding tanks.
Good news comes in the form of a running and driving powertrain. The seller says they replaced the entire ignition system from the plugs to the points and the 330 cubic inch big block V8 runs smoothly. The shore power connection is also working, as is the air-conditioner. That means you could wrench on this engine in air-conditioned comfort! Really bad news comes from the lack of working brakes, so you’ll have to fix them before departing or call a tow truck.
According to Hemmings, these were sold as the perfect backcountry outpost for hunters and sportsmen with some friends. I’m not sure how good the Krager Kustom Koach would have been at that task, but today, it would be a real head-turner at a campground. The seller sees this Krager as a good prepper motorhome since it doesn’t use any electronics.
Regardless of what you’d use it for, you’ll have a rare and obscure coach that is anything but boring. If you’re interested, the camper can be scooped up for $6,000 from the seller in Bethel, Pennsylvania. Have fun on your next camping trip, just make sure you can stop it first.
(Images: Facebook Seller, unless otherwise noted.)
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Some seriously questionable design choices = fabulous. Living for the avocado appliances and green shag rug.
Butter find a good Parkaying spot for it… it looks margarinely larger than the average vehicle!
And remember, it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature. She’ll throw a few trees at you after you park.
Holy sh!t, this is 10-15 minutes from me. It is, um, interesting, but it’s gonna need a ton of fiberglass work, along with one of everything else thrown at it. With the right paint job, and at least a six pack, it could look presentable. Maybe.
I actually lived in a Kragar for about 6 years growing up. My Dad was a traveling minister and we travelled all over the West, NW, South, and mid-South from my 6th grade year until I graduated. The dinette seats laid flat to make a twin bed. Fold it down every night, fold it back up every morning. Homework was done at the table… Parents bed was in the back. Pretty reliable- we probably put 50+k miles on it and I only remember breaking down twice. Ours was the 26’ model and was the reverse color scheme of this one.
Tone-deaf brand name (Post-Civil Rights) and bowel-movement colour scheme aside, the styling is absolutely atrocious, and would have looked very dated, right out of the factory.
Obviously RVs tend to trail automotive styling trends, but whoever penned that front end was still living in the finned, streamline-bathtub era of 1960- a decade in the past. I suppose that matches up with the branding “oversight”, doesn’t it?
Say what you will about brown and avocado green, but by 1970 the form of pretty much everything had moved on to chiseled, tapered wedges and the fuselage shapes of real aero. There are plenty of products in transport and aerospace that trace their origins to the 60s and 70s, that still pass for current with updated details. They were designed to be fit for purpose and to make the most of their materials- The science and logic that guided their design still holds up today.
The GMC motorhome is an example of a product that fits that mold- Throw in a modern drivetrain, current glazing and lighting tech and you could sell those right now. Despite existing on the market at almost the same time, the same could not be said for this horrible Kustom Koach.
The ugliness could be, um… mitigated by changing the paint job to just about anything else, blacking out the space between the grill ribs and between the side windows, and straightening the bumper.
Jesus look at the side view shots. This thing has more waves in the bodywork than the ocean. That fiberglass must be about as thick as a square of toilet paper. I vote CP.
Dad: Cragars?
Son: No, a Krager.
Dad: Not wheels?
Son: Actually, a motorhome. With green shag carpet.
Dad: What did I do to damage you in this way?
Son: It’s OK Dad, I’m comfortable with who I am. I’m just not like you.
Dad: No. You are not.
Son: …
Dad: Green shag?
Son: Green. Yeah.
Dad: OK. OK then…
“Krager Kustom Koach”
Wait, is this why the Munster Koach is spelled with a K and not a C?
This must be one of the only times I can say I love the KKK! and not be bombarded with rotten tomatoes… maybe…
Agreed this is so unique it is a get. Just FYI My source puts 70s dollars at $7.88 for 1 70s dollar. So a bit cheaper probably depends on what year in the 70s.
Still looks way better than the 2023 Super Duty…
BURN!
I think this one has been up for sale off and on for like 2-3 years now, it seems to be in much better condition than I expected. Also glad Krager Kustom Koach opted not to use their initials in any logo
The lines across the front and the angled line on the sides behind the windshield give me a slight H-Y van vibe.
And that avocado-colored stove… oof.
For the not-olds: in the early 1970s, appliances were primarily available in avocado green, harvest gold, and… brown. Aesthetically it was a grim decade.
But, Pet Rocks!
and Transcendental Meditation !
With trucks and truck based vehicles, ugly equals beauty. The uglier the better, the more memorable and the more fondly its recalled. It’s that beast mode mentality, the rough and tumble, ready to take on all comers. Ugly trucks get dirty and shake it off. Ugly trucks get rusty and still show up for work.
Pretty trucks lose their value when the clear coat gets scratched or you get mud on the floor mats. They’re for posers in ostrich skin cockroach killers, not steel toed work boots. At the end of the day you don’t give it a pat on the hood in thanks for a job well done, you stick it in a garage so rain won’t spot up the finish.
Gimme an ugly truck any day and I’ll be a happy driver.
Hmmmmm
Yes.
Must be extremely careful to spell it out every time or use this abbreviation.
I gotta think that even in 1970 this naming choice was pretty tone deaf.
Could have been on purpose. In which case the cool factor for this vehicle drops significantly.
Significantly. Like all the way to zero.
Indeed.
Quite so! One wonders if that’s why they switched from Chevrolet trucks to Ford trucks for the donor vehicles, given Henry Ford’s, uh, beliefs…
They knew.
Yeah, I saw the headline in my feed and did a double take. I’ve been told that, back in the day in certain parts of the country, establishments were sometimes given names like ‘Karen’s Kountry Kitchen’ to give you an idea of the owner’s…proclivities. I’m really wondering about these coach (koach?) builders.
There’s a Kathy’s Kreative Kakes in San Mateo, California and I always figured it’s a coin flip whether it’s a dog whistle or the most naive little old lady you’ve ever heard of and nobody has the heart to tell her
I visited the RV/MH Hall of Fame in Elkhart, IN earlier this year (recommended!). I can confirm that the display floor is full of things named Kampers, Koaches, Karavans, Kars, and other devices for Kamping in.
Krispy Kreme it is different you don’t have to bend over backwards and make up cases of racism. There are enough real cases to do battle with.
Kampgrounds of America has entered the chat. Abbreviated KOA and some very nice if expensive private campgrounds all across, you guessed it, America.
Easier to trademark if you alter the spelling. Also, those comedy K sounds
LOL! I should note that’s how the manufacturer chose to abbreviate its name. At least, that’s what I found when I fell down the Wayback Machine rabbit hole. Smart choice.
Today it would be ” Kray “
Honestly, I wouldn’t call this ugly in the least. It’s interesting, and probably one of the most 70’s things I’ve ever laid eyes on, but it’s not ugly. It wouldn’t look out of place in a Pixar movie with that retro-future style they like doing.
I think it is ugly, but with some different color choices and judicious application of chrome (and perhaps a significant amount of alcohol for the viewer) this could be cool.
Just looked through the pictures again. Gonna need some fiberglass work and a ton of booze.
Yeah, the fiberglass is wavy as hell, but that’s probably more down to age.
Go look at a GMC motorhome of the same vintage, or any other quality fibreglass product like a high-end yacht. With proper design and manufacturing, the structure of Fibreglass does not go bad with age. This Kamper was always a piece of shit.
It does need some chrome to spruce up the look, and I try to ignore colors when judging the overall design of something. For example, Mazda has great designs, but they look terrible in black and silver, which is probably why you rarely see black and silver ones on the road.
Ignoring color is probably a good policy (not just for cars…). I’d like to see the ridges on the front extended partially down the sides. Also like to see the wavy go away.