Hello All, Ive only been on the list for a few days now, so I'm about a year late to this thread. In the late '80s I owned a Commer camper van with the neatest pop-top I've ever seen. When raised, solid panels would unfold accordion style, revealing small opening vent windows, making for a very snug, weather-tite pop-up [unlike the noisy, drafty and leaky canvas type on Westfalia's]. As I recall, the only "camper" equipment in it was a sink with water tank and hand pump, a 12v florescent light and very nice wood paneling. I'm thinking it was a '67. It was white over kind of a creamy grey and had the Chrysler pentastar at the bottom of the doors. There was a very elaborate plaque on the back of the top from the coachbuilder "[somewhere] on Thames" that did the camper conversion. At 60 someodd thousand miles, it was totally rust free and very reliable. I drove it all over southern Oregon and loved it. In '91, about 2 weeks before we were going to head to Mexico in it, the rear end started sounding like a angry SkillSaw. It was to be a 6 month trip. I had already moved out of my house into my girlfriend's apartment. She had already given notice in anticipation of our April 1st departure. Having no space or time to fix it, I parked it at a friends, bought a VW Westfalia, and off we went. Amazingly, enroute to the Yucatan, I saw another Commer on the road somewhere in Arizona. My Weberized 1600 dualport VW couldn't keep up with the Commer, let alone catch it! That was and still is the only other one I ever saw. After returning to Oregon I still drove the Commer occasionally until it developed a fairly substantial oil leak [probabaly just a bad pan gasket as I recall]. About that same time I had to return to Seattle for family reasons. With nowhere to park it for a indefinite period of time, I put it on consignment with a "speciality" car dealer in Ashland OR. I gave him specific instructions regarding the oil leak including a note attached to the dashboard, key tag, and the title [which he insisted on having in exchange for a consignment contract]. During my time in Seattle, I could never get the dealer to answer my calls. I had a friend try to contact him and he reported back that the whole dealership had "vanished". When I finally returned to Ashland, I tracked the scum-bag down. He told me the sickening story about selling it to a guy who ran it out of oil on the way home, supposedly returning the guys money but not bothering to get my Commer back. His parting comment was the traditional "sue me"! Knowing that his dealer license and bond had been revoked and that you can't get blood from a rock, that was the end of that. Until a couple years later when I saw it parked in a field west of Grants Pass. It was late at night, in the middle of pretty much nowhere and I was still so sick over the whole affair that I couldn't bring myself to stay over to persue it the next day, but it was definitely my old van and I've never gotten it out of my mind. Shortly after that is when I moved down here to New Mexico and I've never been close enough since to go looking for it again... But I have a hunch that it is probably still in that field! These days I have the time and resources to go retrieve it if anyone can confirm its existence - At the very least it would be of some comfort to know that it found a good home. After many, many years, I am obviously not over it! If anyone out there is in the Grants Pass - Cave Junction area of Oregon, I can still give rough directions as to where I last saw it. As a somewhat interesting [and perhaps helpful to some] sidenote, I still have the factory service and parts manual for it. Although I still can't part with it, I would be happy to copy any or all of it if anyone out there needs such. Although my Tiger does give me some comfort these days, I just can't bring myself to try sleeping in it. Besides, it doesn't have a florescent light or wood peneling let alone a weathertight pop-top or sink!
Greg "Lunker" Hilyer
Lunkercars@earthlink.net
Albuquerque NM
P.S. I still occationally think about the '61[?] Alpine I sold to a guy in Medford around that same time. I've always wondered what Oregon DMV made of the Washington title that showed it as a SUNTAN Alpine - Still chuckle about that one as the mis-print was actually pretty appropriate - it never had a top in my ownership.