(first posted 5/30/2012)
Front-wheel-drive may have been a bit of expensive over-kill for the personal-luxury coupe 1966 Toronado, but the Oldsmobile engineers who created the UPP (Unitized Power Package) unleashed a revolution for powering motor homes. It was just the ticket: a compact, but very powerful (375 hp) and slick package to stick in the front end of an RV. Who would be the first to take the plunge? Or more importantly, who would have the lightest motor home to turn into a hot rod? Ultra, of course.
The Toronado’s UPP was just begging to be put into a motorhome, since it eliminated the long driveshaft hand heavy rear driven axle, and most importantly, allowed a lower floor. Two motor home pioneers saw the UPP’s potential, and acted upon it.
The first to hit the market was the 1969 Travoy, a 26 footer with a long aerodynamic nose that had two benefits: access to the engine, and…high speed.
A stock Travoy was soon taken to the salt flats, where it set a new motor home record of 97.613 mph. But top speed is only part of the equation; what about acceleration?
There were two shortcomings from using the Corvair engine in the ultra-light Ultra Van: it was underpowered, and Chevrolet was discontinuing the Corvair as of 1969. And the allure of the Olds UPP blazed brightly, in this case, in the eyes of Chuck Burgess, Ultra’s head of Engineering. So Burgess took the basics of the UV, including its airplane-like alloy body and low floor, and reconfigured it to accept the UPP. The result was the Tiara.
The Tiara didn’t fully supplant the UV, which was also revised to accept a 200hp Chevy 307 V8 in the rear, but as a higher-priced premium Ultra. But except for new front and rear caps, the middle section was still the same basic structure.
The Tiara did add some weight over the UV, but it was still a relative featherweight at about 6000 lbs. Combined with the 455’s 375 hp, that made for a power-to-weight ratio of 1:16, a superlative figure, better than many if not most passenger cars from the seventies. The Tiara was unparalleled in acceleration, and if it had been blessed with a somewhat less blunt front end, would undoubtedly have topped 100mph easily. I’m not aware of what its top speed actually was, but effortless cruising at anything up to ninety was now at hand, if one was willing to pay for the gas bills. At reasonable speeds, eleven mpg was about average.
The Tiara arrived six months after the Travoy, but Ultra ran into problems in 1970, and only some 39 Tiaras were ever built. A successor firm, Belco, continued production until 1972. CC reader Tom found this 1971 Tiara for sale on craigslist ($9000), and wanted to share it with us. That got me going on some further research, and a flickr page with lots of Tiara material.
Of course, the Travoy and Tiara weren’t the only ones grabbing Toronado power. Even home-builders got in the act, like this wild converted 1946 trailer.
The Revcon appeared in 1972, and spawned a long line of Toro-powered caches. We’ll do a CC on this handsome beast soon.
And belatedly, GMC got in the act too, with their superb 23 and 26 foot motor homes. I promise a CC on these one of these day/years/decades.
Anyway, the Tiara will continue to wear the crown for the best power-to-weight ratio of any of them, and that deserves a deep bow.
The Tiara should have been in the movie Convoy… 😛
Neat. I had read a bit about these when I was researching the GMC Motor Home, but I didn’t get terribly deep into them.
The one quibble I’d make is the eternal question of comparing power-to-weight ratios of cars before and after the adoption of SAE net ratings. I don’t know what the original Toronado’s actual net output may have been, but I’d guess it was more in the 275-300 hp range, not the (gross) rated 375. (Mid-70s Toronados with the low-compression 455 had between 215 and 250 net horsepower, depending on model year.) That still leaves the Tiara in the first rank of motorhomes, though.
First rule of Hotrodding if it goes it must also stop and these used what? discs, jakes, a concrete block on a chain?
A Slant-6 engine-block on a rope!
I own Tiara 2015 and she drives like a car! And brakes like one too. It’s only 6200 llbs with empty tanks. Sure you need to be careful but no real worries about braking. It has a brake booster too. Nothing compared to any other class A motor homes. If anything it drives like a Delta 88…I think the hot rod analogy is in the context of other motor homes not a Shelby cobra. …cheers!
I just acquired a GMC Motorhome … drove it home from Buffalo to the Quad Cities … 70 Mph and 12 mpg all the way … and it had a lot more oomph under the pedal … Putting radial tires on it transformed the handling and made it track pretty true in and around all kinds of traffic …
But it is ’70 technology, even tho’ there are all kinds of aftermarket suppliers out there, so you can actually install fuel injection on these for additional tractability. But its been an reminder how ’70’s vehicles drove, with a lazy V8 thumping under the hood, and the suspension a bit clack compared to the sports cars I drove in the same era.
I’m still learning its quirks and foibles but the first impressions are powerful When these things were new, they must have been amazing, still is. Everywhere I stopped, people drifted over to talk about it …
We await the CC cool score though
If I ever were to buy a motorhome, it’d have to be a 23′ GMC. The GMC’s are my favorite. My old boss had a rough 26′ Palm Beach model that I occasionally got to work on — it was an ongoing project. The gauge cluster and speedo are straight out of the ’70 -’72 Cutlass (minus the Tach/Clock).
Hopefully these will be featured here soon.
The GMC motor home deserves a history in my mind probably because I am a fan of them.
Back in the early 80s my hometown in NJ, Millburn purchased 2 of these GMC Motor Coaches ambulance conversions. I knew of no other town in the state that had incorporated these vehicles to their ambulance corp and they stood out for their flair and style. My memory is a bit foggy as to when they were phased out but they gave the township 15 years of superb service and uniqueness.
Actually, Chuck Burgess was responsible for developing both the Tiara and the V8 Ultra Van. Burgess was head engineer of Ultra Inc.
Ultra Inc. built Ultra Vans under a licensing agreement with Dave Peterson. He helped them get the factory up and running in 1965-66, but then he moved back to CA and went back into retirement.
Also, after Ultra Inc. closed in 1970, a new company called Belco continued Tiara production until 1972.
Owen, thanks for the corrections. I’ll amend the article.
I started looking at Corvair vans after seeing a post here, which eventually led me to the Ultravans and Tiaras… any fan of these vehicles probably already know this, but there’s a wonderful resource at http://www.corvair.org/chapters/ultravan/
Paul, I absolutely love the campers and busses, keep them coming! I don’t know much about the GMC campers although I do see them every so often, so I’ll be sure to check back in. The photos of your chinook reminded me of the wave of fiberglass egg campers that popped up in the 60s and 70s, among them Scamp and Casita. Those are still making them today, but there’s dozens that made a few hundred and then folded. I don’t get to see many on the roads, so finding one curbside might be a problem.
Hi. I own Seattle’s first Medic One,
Custom built by Belco, a 1969 Ultra Van.
See my web site for more information.
and feel free to contact me.
206 954 6498
mediconerestoration.com
In article photo #9, looks like a Pontiac or Olds grille has
been incorporated into the front of that beige colored
example.
It appears to have a Ford C Series windsheild too.
Hey don’t overlook the Cortez from the Clark forklift people. They had a front driver 6 years before Ultra.
I am a big fan of the UPP. Built when GM still had real, free thinking engineers. My only regret is not stockpiling a few back when you could pick them up for next to nothing. I have a Petersen’s engine swapping book from the mid ’70s, and one swap profiled is the installation of one of these UPP’s in a Porsche 912. They used old luggage, bolted together and cut out to make a engine cover! Clever, I must say.
Of the RVs of the 1960s and 70s shown here, My favourites are the Corvair-based Ultra-Van, the Revcon (“flat-nosed”) Motorhome, and the GMC Motorhome.
> A stock Travoy was soon taken to the salt flats, where it set a new motor home record of 97.613 mph. But top speed is only part of the equation; what about acceleration?
Forget both; I want a Nürburgring time… 🙂
Why wasn’t Cadillac’s version of the UPP with the 500 V8 (or the earlier 472) used in any of these FWD motorhomes? All of the GM FWD based RVs I’m aware of used used the Olds Rocket engines.
I saw a GMC motorhome in the wild not long ago, and remember walking though them several times at the annual RV show at the DC Armory (or was it the Silver Spring, MD armory? Don’t remember which). They seemed at least a decade ahead of everything else at the show, and still do. Replace the round sealed beams with wildly-shaped modern LED headlamps, and I think many people could be convinced a GMC motorhome was current. The Tiara is nice, but looks its age.
It may be a Tiara box, but I think there’s a bit of Cuban engineering going on. I can’t help but notice 8 lugs and an absence of those very identifiable Toronado wheels on it. The period pictures seem to show them, too.
And what appears to be a full floating rear axle.