Kom-Pak Sportsmen - a boat and a camper
It’s a problem that persists to this day - you want to camp and you want to fish. But, somehow, you can’t bring two trailers. Such was the dilemma faced by the creator of the Kom-Pak Sportsman boat camper too. So the Medford, Oregon company came up with a solution. Make a trailer that had a camper on the bottom and a boat on the top. Easy!
Better yet the Kom-Pak boat and trailer was stylish, copying the form of a 1953 Ford Wagon complete with the small fins and round taillights. If you towed one of these with that Ford you had a nifty matched set and bonus points if you painted them both the same color.
Chasing one down
Recently I was driving around in my own neighborhood and saw one of our local farmers pull into his farm with a Kom-Pak trailer. Considering that it is estimated that fewer than 20 of these exist in the world, you can bet that I was surprised to see it.
It turns out that this particular model was bought new by his uncle and has remained in the family ever since then. Now the farmer, Tom, has ideas of restoring it all back to like-new condition and, as a part of doing so, has also been working on a ’53 Ford Sedan to tow it with. The idea is to paint the trailer to match the tow vehicle and have a car, camper and boat that all have that 1950s style.
The Kom-Pak trailer is best described as a teardrop trailer with a boat for a roof. Flip down the big door in the back and you have a table. Past that is the kitchen, of sorts, which has a sink and a 5.4 cubic foot ice box. What’s an ice box?
Think of a cooler nowadays like a Pelican or Yeti, but built in. You would buy a big block of ice and put it on the top of the ice box and that’s how your food would stay cold. Funny thing, there were probably still some people who had ice boxes in their houses in the early 1950s although most had upgraded to a refrigerator by that time.
There were also cabinets in the back and the door made for a nice work table upon which to put something like a Coleman stove.
History
The fiberglass Kom-Pak Sportsman trailer with fiberglass boat weighed approximately 1,180lbs. The trailer came with built-in work table, cabinets, 5.4 cubic foot ice refrigerator and 8.4 gallon water tank. The trailers retailed for $1,595 in Medford, OR.
Collectibility
The trailers were built out of fiberglass as were the boats that rode on top that formed the roof. That boat stayed up there by mechanical clips but it was easy enough to bring down. Just unlatch the clips and there were roller wheels at the back of the trailer to use to bring down the boat.
Since the boat was the ceiling and roof when you had it deployed for fishing there was a convertible top if you didn’t want to sleep under the stars. The top sort of flipped over to provide a temporary roof. It was actually a pretty slick arrangement.
Inside the trailer itself was not much more than sleeping quarters and some storage to hold fishing rods or guns or even clothes. At under 1,200 pounds it had everything a sportsman would need to enjoy his time in the woods.
While there isn’t much information about this, what I could find indicated that there were only an estimated 20 of these ever made. It is thought that only six of them exist to this day although I don’t know if Tom’s is counted in that number since it has never changed hands since new.
That’s the problem with some ‘sources’ on the Internet. Talking to some vintage trailer enthusiasts they have been able to count far more than six of these that have crossed the auction blocks in the past few years and there are estimates that many, many more were made than just 20. Think of this one in particular that I followed - it had never changed hands and was still in the original family. It hadn’t been licensed in years so it was off the radar, so to speak.
Tom’s trailer, despite being mid-restoration, seems to have weathered the years well and the fiberglass and even the interior wood are still in reasonably good condition.
The plans are to finish the restoration and all the parts are there. Then, who knows. Car shows? Camping?
Whatever the case he’s on the right path with a really cool family heirloom that would be a hit at a car show or a vintage RV show.
