1973 Escort Caravan - "Olive the Escort"

[Deleted]

I am the very lucky owner of, it seems, a rare breed of caravan that I would like to share with you all.
We purchased it from Ebay 3 years ago- somewhat worse for wear. It is registered as a 1984 Escort HOWEVER i am doubting the age of it after the posts I have read on this site. It seems that the Escorts went out of production in the 70s??
I there any way to really tell the original age of my van?
Ill post some more of our renos shortly. rachel

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The lino was in it when we purchased it. I burnt all the curtains, the mattress and anything else that was yuck! We painted anything that opened and shut or looked at me the wrong way with 3 coats of paint! We kept with the olive green theme throughout.

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It had some water damage , which we have fixed. We paid someone to re-do the ceiling.

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Check out the 80's tape player that came with the van. We just couldnt part with it, and the piece of tie wire that was attached holding the shelf up!!!
My darling Mum sewed all new curtains throughout for us.

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I found bits and pieces of decorations at 2nd hand shops and liquid nailed them into their spots!!!! if there was a crack in the wall that needed covering I had the solution!
Notice the original old speaker above the bed.

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We pulled the stove/oven out of it and replaced it with a microwave and benchtop. much more user friendly. My Hubby made all new cupboard doors and I decorated them. We are now trying to decide how to design the outside paint job and stick to the era of the van

[millard1399]

G'day Rachel, and welcome to the forum! ;D

That's quite a nice little van there, and some very good restoration work inside as well!

There's still some uncertainty about when the Escort brand actually stopped production. When I did some research in the Sydney newspaper archives, the last advertisements for Escort were in 1973. Looking at your van, I can see it has the wind-out windows, which were introduced into the caravan industry in 1973. I can also see the wind-up hatch, which was the forerunner to the Starlight four-seasons hatch introduced in 1974. Weighing all that up, I'm inclined to think your van would have been built in 1973. Is there any chassis number welded on the front drawbar anywhere? Not that that would help because we don't have any other Escort chassis numbers to compare it with, but at least we will have yours as a starting point.

This is the history of the Escort brand from my research...

"Escort caravans were started in Sydney by Bill Hobson, a former caravan production engineer. The demand for small caravans was growing every week, with many retired people or young couples wanting a van they could tow behind a small car. Bill recognised this need and started production of a lightweight van to suit the small family.

Production commenced around 1968, with the initial vans being 10ft 6ins in length. A 13ft van was then added to the range. Escorts were sold through the Carapark dealership in Sydney, as well as through Castle Caravans in outer Sydney. The Escort brand appears to have been discontinued around 1975.

An Escort van sold through the Castle Caravans dealership is likely to have a Castle badge on the rear saying it was sold by them.

At this stage it is not known where the Escort factory was actually located, but it seems to have been somewhere in Sydney."

Hope this helps,
cheers,
Al.

[Wanda]

Hi Al. I have aquired an Escort caravan with 1965 year of manufacture on it from my mother. It has the Escort emblem and all of the interior is in original condition. Could any one give me an indication of worth?? I note it will be a vintage in a couple of yrs, but what does that really mean other than its old!!
thanks for any feedback...... curious
regards Wanda

[millard1399]

G'day wanda,

If you think your Escort is from 1965, it will have plain aluminium cladding with perhaps a wide painted band around the van at window height. My research (as shown above in another post) suggested the Escort brand was started around 1968, so do you have information that confirms the date of your van?

Any van that was built before January 1970 is considered to be "vintage", so you might also be interested in visiting our sister forum for vintage caravans at www.vintagecaravans.com

Unfortunately, there's no way of accurately determining a caravan's "worth" or value. Too many things can have a bearing on what people would be prepared to pay for an old van. If you want to work out a value for insurance purposes, and not for a sale purpose, just pluck a figure out of the air, say, something like $5,000 if the van is in really really good condition. Other than that, you might as well throw a dart at a list of prices, from what I've seen of caravan sales.

Hope this helps,
cheers,
Al.

[Deleted]

Hi everyone, its been 12 months since I have logged in. I even had to re-join and thankfully no=one has used my username in that time!!! maybe its because my username is as unique as my caravan!!!

I am in the process of having the old girl painted on the outside finally. When I last posted my pics of the inside reno I was hoping to have Olive painted in the following 12 months but that didn't happen. How exciting that now is the time.

Anyway, I found it very amusing today when I called into the sign writer in Dubbo, to choose colours for Olives stripes that he commented "Do you know I spent 2 hours searching the internet looking for ESCORT caravans" I felt sorry for the poor fellow.
I replied that I had learnt from Al on this forum that indeed Escorts are rare .
I then told him that I have a search saved on Ebay for Escort Caravans and when a van is listed I get an email. Since I first joined this forum 3 yrs ago I have had this search and I usually only get 2 emails a year from Ebay to say an Escort is for Sale!!!! In this time I have NEVER seen the same van as ours listed- only the smaller size Escort.
Does anyone else know anything more about Escorts other than what Al posted in 2011

Al's post is below:

There's still some uncertainty about when the Escort brand actually stopped production. When I did some research in the Sydney newspaper archives, the last advertisements for Escort were in 1973. Looking at your van, I can see it has the wind-out windows, which were introduced into the caravan industry in 1973. I can also see the wind-up hatch, which was the forerunner to the Starlight four-seasons hatch introduced in 1974. Weighing all that up, I'm inclined to think your van would have been built in 1973. Is there any chassis number welded on the front drawbar anywhere? Not that that would help because we don't have any other Escort chassis numbers to compare it with, but at least we will have yours as a starting point.

This is the history of the Escort brand from my research...

"Escort caravans were started in Sydney by Bill Hobson, a former caravan production engineer. The demand for small caravans was growing every week, with many retired people or young couples wanting a van they could tow behind a small car. Bill recognised this need and started production of a lightweight van to suit the small family.

Production commenced around 1968, with the initial vans being 10ft 6ins in length. A 13ft van was then added to the range. Escorts were sold through the Carapark dealership in Sydney, as well as through Castle Caravans in outer Sydney. The Escort brand appears to have been discontinued around 1975.

An Escort van sold through the Castle Caravans dealership is likely to have a Castle badge on the rear saying it was sold by them.

At this stage it is not known where the Escort factory was actually located, but it seems to have been somewhere in Sydney."

Hope this helps,
cheers,
Al.

[ARTIETHEESCORTVAN]

Hi - I have just purchased a 10ft Escort van and towed it from Newcastle to Tweed Heads behind my Suzuki! It was so easy to tow though not sure about the long term safety effects on my car. I am going to renovate it and want to include white wall wheels with matching hub caps to the van pin stripe- the original colour is aqua- among other things. Unfortunately the original owner repainted the van himself so I will need to strip it back and get it done professionally. Any hints, tips or general info abut renovating a caravan is most welcome. I will post before and after photos once I recover from the drive! The overall condition is fantastic but I guess after all this time I probably need to give it a good safety check. Is there anything structural I should look at first? If anyone has any photos of their little Escorts would love to see also.
Cheers
Bec (ARTIE refers to the number plate RT)

[Deleted]

Hi Everyone.
Our Escort is at the panel beaters in Dubbo NSW, being sanded back for a exterior paint job. I have chosen to have her re-painted white but when I went to take progress pics a few of the blokes there said how good she looks in silver. Retro. What are your suggestions???
I am still yet to figure out the actual age of her as well but have to laugh every time we re-new her rego as the slip says she is a 1984 Escort!!!! Try 1964 I reckon. Cheers Rachel

I am going with the original stripes design but the colours are olive green and lighter green.

[bobt]

Hi olivetheescort

Olive green and a lighter green sounds real good to me. Not so sure I would want to keep it silver. But at the end of the day it is your call.

If you post the chassis number on 'ere one of our in house wizards may be able to tell you what year she was built.

bobt

[ForumMod]

The problem with plain aluminium cladding is that you are committing yourself to a lifetime of polishing it, if you want to keep it looking shiny. There are any number of people on the Vintage Caravans forum who have spent a considerable number of hours polishing their van to bring it up to something like a "show and shine" finish. If you live near the ocean, the salt spray carried on the wind can very quickly make the cladding look pretty ordinary.

The other reason I would shy away from having it plain is that caravans from 1973 didn't have plain aluminium. I'm not necessarily advocating that we should keep these caravans original, but some things just don't go together, and to me it's the year 1973 and plain aluminium.

Did you ever find a chassis number welded on the front drawbar?

cheers,
Al.

[ForumMod]

Here's an Escort photo from my collection, showing some shades of olive and green that might appeal to you...




I think this van might be from the same sort of time period as your van, so the olive/green colour scheme was around at that time.

cheers,
Al.

[dollytheholidayvan]

Wow! I am very excited to finally know what my van is after many hours of searching the internet. My van is the same size (I think) as theoliveescort and it has green and orange stripes on the outside. I found my Escort at the tip and it has a fair bit of damage so I am not going to keep it original. If anyone is interested, I have started a blog to track my progress dollytheholidayvan.blogspot.com.au/

Thankyou for the valuable information
Jess

[Deleted]

Nice renovation. Crisp and clean!

[olivetheescort]

Hi all.
I have finally got the number that is welded to our draw bar. It is ET84
Does anyone know the year of manufacture of our van.
Kind Regards Rachel

[pisces51]

G'day Rachel,

From the small amount of info we've collected over the years about Escort caravans (mostly from you, I might add ), I doubt very much whether anyone can tell you exactly when the 84th Escort was built. I still think your van is from 1973 (as I've posted above previously under an old username). If we presume the Escort started being built in 1968 and seems to have been discontinued by about 1973 or so, then we can divide 84 vans up into those 5 years and come up with a rough figure of 17 vans per year. If poor old Bill Hobson was building them mostly by himself, then 17 vans per year (that's more than one per month) might be a viable figure.

After hitting his thumb sixteen million times over those five years, he probably thought, "Stuff this caravan building, I'm going fishing!!"

cheers,
Al.

[olivetheescort]

Hi Al
Thanks for the info on our Olive. Currently we are in the Warrumbungles National Park NSW with her. Have had a few people say good on you for doing her up.
One thing I would like to mention is that in the whole time I have been posting in this site looking for info about our Olive I have NEVER seen another 16 foot van like ours. I have a search saved on EBay that alerts me when an Escort van comes up for sale too. I usually get 2 emails a year but never any 16 foot vans. I wonder how many were made do you know?

[Nev/Loren]

Hi all, We have been very interested in all your comments about Escort Caravans, we have just purchased a 16 ft Escort 1972 model which we are in the process of restoring painted all the exterior trims where the green was we painted hyundai teal blue the same colour as our hyundai tucson and kept the orange which we updated to the international orange which is almost identical to the original orange colour just finished painting that today, we have only had it for about a month, it is in really good nick for its age it has bars going around the back of it I have weldered a modified car stand on the back and the piece that slides into the car stand I have attached to my motorized pushbike I have made a simple pulley set up that hooks onto the bike my wife just walks back pulling on the rope which lifts the bike as well as me lifting the bike gently and it just slides into position and we put the pin into the carstand and put a lock on it and off we go. We have two Plega Beds that fit into the back section absolutely perfect, we have altered the front section where the table and seating section was to accomodate more storage and a Fridge/Freezer and two deep cycle batteries we are hoping to purchase a good quality inverter we are also in the process of connecting a charging system from the car to the caravan using anderson plugs the car charges the batteries so you never have a flat battery. Just a point that you might be interested I got married in 1972 and now I own an Escort Caravan that is a 1972 and I am now 66 years young we are very happy with it looking forward to hitting the road in it at the end of the year. Back in 1975/1976 I think that was around the dates my memory is not as good as it used to be I worked at Coronet Caravans in Victoria for approximately 3 years I left there 6 months before it closed down the ballarat branch the wendoree branch incase anyone knows about ballarat I did lots of different things while working there but for a lot of the time I fitted the gas stoves and gas/electric fridges to the vans which was a great job. I think we will sign off now hope to hear from someone real soon. Nev/Loren

[Mustang]

Hi Nev & Loren,
Welcome to Classic Caravans.
Please register & start your own thread under "Hall of Fame" .
You can post images with an outside agency like photobucket, Flicker or similar.
Cheers
Brent

[Deleted]

Hi Brent, Thank you for the welcome message and we have now registered and placed a new thread under the hall of fame and will post photos soon. Nevandloren.