Rooftop pop-up tents are all the rage these days, but back in the seventies camping tents that facilitated sleeping in hatchbacks was a popular thing. But this shot of a Hornet-based AMX sporting one with the AMC logo was quite a find, by Matt Z. I suspect very, very few of these tents survived, and matching it up with an AMX makes for a terrific combination to show off at car shows.
Matt shot another rather unusual camper there too:
I’ve never seen one of these Chevy S-10 based units before. Looks like a significant wheelbase extension was involved.
Related AMX reading:
CC 1977 AMC Hornet AMX: The Long, Slow Decline of the AMX Ed Stembridge
Those long hatchback lids would give good support for a tent. No chance of cratering when it rains. Also maintains the Nash tradition.
According to the info on the camper, it was one of five made.
Let’s try posting the pic again..
Wow, that’s quite a rig. Turns out there’s photos of this camper (including interior shots) here:
https://www.motor1.com/news/430337/chevrolet-s-10-custom-camper/
It was made by a company located in Mishawaka, Indiana called New World Conversions, which evidently had a brief career in making van conversions from minivans, full-size vans, and I guess five dually S-10s.
There couldn’t have been many of those tent-equipped AMX’s made either. It looks like the one in Matt’s picture may be the same one that is in the background of one of the photos Ed Stembridge had in his CC post; and that one is probably the same one is featured in a few more pics here:
https://www.cars-on-line.com/amc07-77hornet.html
Very neat.
This reminds me of the hatch tent that was available from Pontiac for the old ‘outdoor lifestyle’ Aztek. The joke went that the Aztek’s tent covered the wrong end of the vehicle.
Probably more of those still floating around than what has got to be the extremely rare AMX tent.
I saw someone driving this style of AMX not long ago at all, and it was also yellow. I reminded me how attractive that early Hornet hatchback was and how unfortunate it was that body style was discontinued so far before the end. Even non-AMX versions like in the 007 film were very well proportioned and stanced. Put this AMX next to an ’87 Eagle sedan, and most people would think the sedan was 10 years older than the hatchback, not the other way around. This will date this post very thoroughly, but I loved the Eagle wagon in the finale of Better Call Saul. The car casting on that world has always been good, but that was a nice final “caracter” debut for us car fans.
I liked the choice of Eagle as well!
Better Call Saul may be the best overall series I’ve ever watched.
There are a few manufacturers of similar tents offered in sizes for small/medium and large SUV’s and pickups with camper shells. And while the Aztek tents are rare, a similar tent offered as an option for the GMC Envoy shows up occasionally on EBay. They are either priced as a cheaper alternative to a new aftermarket tent, or overpriced as a collector’s item. These got on my radar when I still had a shell on my Tacoma and was figuring out ways to make that 5’ bed more habitable for two or even one full sized humans to sleep in.
Chevy had these for the Nova liftback in the mid-70s…
Yep, and they offered it on the Vega, too. Many years ago, I actually had one, along with a full head of hair. I even have photographic evidence of these two things.
I wonder why S-10 motorhomes didn’t sell? Stretched Toyotas did, in big numbers.
Maybe because they had even less power than the Toyota’s did?
International made a tent attachment for the back of the Scout in the middle of the same decade. I’ve seen a couple in person; one was at the IH Nationals show a couple of years back. I guess this was a relatively common aftermarket option…?
I took photos of that AMX at the Iola car show in Wisconsin a few years back.
The tent accessory started in ’73 when the Hornet Hatchback was introduced. I have seen probably a dozen of them, NOS, over the years, at AMC swap meets. There was also an optional mattress to make the ‘bed’ more comfortable. The tent kit included a little thumb screw to attach to one of the lift struts, so the hatch did not come down on you during the night. (Look out-if your gas lift struts were loosing their pressure over the years!) The other piece of the kit was a little foam cube to stuff into the bottom side of the hatch ‘lock’ to shut off the optional switch for the dome light! No fun sleeping with light in your eyes! I’m fortunate to have one of these tents for my ’74 Hatchback X. I think Chevy offered one for the Hatchback Nova as well.
Thanks for the article, and some good words for AMC, Paul!
Down under GMH got hold of a two door hatch from Opel and produced them as Holden toranas complete with optional Hatch Hutch, Ive seen one at a show but suspect it was a reproduction
Wow! Can you imagine trying to pull a grade fully loaded w/ that gutless 2.6??
When I was a kid, we used to say AMC meant AlMost Car 😁 no offense to the Kenosha-heads out there. I’d never seen the AMX with pop out tent before, very cool
We had one of these around 1967 to 1973, not coinciding with my Father’s owning two Rambler Classic wagons (’61 and ’63) in a row. It was called a “camp o’tel”
It was pretty ingenious…what you don’t see is that there was a pull out kitchen unit that stored on a pole sticking out from the back of the base of the camper itself, which doubled as the rest for the wooden “landing” that the ladder attached to to help you get into the middle of the tent (where the zipper to get in was). The kitchen unit wasn’t fancy, but it unfolded to two wings you could eat from (table space) and in the middle was a small gas burner unit, and two plastic tubs used to wash dishes (soap and rinse sides). Also two fold out benches that stored underneath the tent unit (towards the roof of the car). The picture shows 1 of 2 cylindrical water tanks, one side was actually towards a small cabana unit which it tilted into as a cold water shower, there was a bag toilet as well.
One of the neatest things about it was that when not on the car, it stored on the roof of our garage, and cranked down onto the top of the car. You could remove it from the roof of the car and put it on the ground if you had 4 reasonably able people (kind of like pal bearers, though I don’t care what the analogy implies).
We got rid of it partly due to the birth of my youngest sister expanded our family, it was already marginal since we had 5 people and the tent only slept 4, but I had a pup tent that I’d stay in, and we had a wagon so someone could crawl in the back, once supplies were removed from it, if need be. It wasn’t too fun in the rain though, the side bunks had little head room so everyone tended to want to occupy the middle which got crowded quickly. My Dad bought a Viking pop top camper in 1973, we tried to store the Camp’0 tel in the basement of our house in Virginia (we’d since moved from Burlington VT to Manassas Va, the house in Manassas unfortunately had a garage with a tall ceiling such that the camper couldn’t be stored on the ceiling anymore). We ripped the canvas trying to get the camp o’tel into the basement from the outside entrance which was too tight to manuver it into the basement from our backyard.
When I moved out on my own, my Dad kind of gave up on camping, sold the trailer before moving to Texas (40 years ago this July).
I really like the Hornet and the Concord that came later…wouldn’t mind a 2 door Hornet to drive around town…which is odd for me, I’m a confirmed hatch lover, but I really like the 2 door on these for some reason (not so much the Concord, which had the opera window, but the normal Hornet 2 door)…for the Concord, make it a wagon, don’t need AWD, RWD would be great for me.
Is there anyone making a reproduction of the AMC Hornet Hatchback tent?
The NOS tents. you find now are in rough conditions due to long shelve storage. Almost
50 years old ! The rain resistant material breaks down due to age.