1970 Ford Camelot Cruiser Motorhome: The Most Luxurious and Insane RV of the Decade

That unicorn is the Ford Camelot Cruiser, which, for the most part of that decade, held the unofficial title of the world’s most luxurious motorhome. At $150,000 the base price, which would be more than $900,000 adjusted for inflation in today’s money, it was definitely the most expensive. Believe it or not, this overpriced unicorn is still around – there are three of them, to be precise.

Three such units of the Camelot Cruiser were built, but the idea for them was that they could be customized to the tastes, whims and desires, and budget of any multi-millionaire looking for the perfect mobile vacation home. That home on wheels, a palace by most accounts, would include all the basics in terms of creature comforts, luxury fixtures and features, and storage room for whatever the family wanted to bring along. Perhaps the biggest surprise about these motorhomes was that they limited the family to four members at most.

The Camelot Cruiser is the creation of Richard “Dick” Edler and his Edler & Company of Skokie, Illinois, which was founded in 1938 as Atlas Van Lines, integrated Edler Warehousing in 1962, and for the decade of the ‘70s, added RV limited-series production to its list of services that mostly included storage, moving and third-party logistics. Edler got the idea for such an RV when planning for family vacations for his retirement, and upon realizing that there was not a single motorhome on the market that provided the kind of luxury he wanted, as well as the possibility to carry four Saint Bernard dogs. No vacation is a true vacation if the family pet is left behind, as all pet owners know by now.

So Edler set out to create a motorhome that would satisfy his family’s needs. That would turn out to be the first of the three Camelot Cruisers, a rig consisting of a 1970 Ford C-900 heavy-duty truck and a Gerstenslager trailer. The truck was a repurposed and widened one, but the trailer was a legit palace on wheels, offering everything, including the kitchen sink. A dual sink, no less.

All three Camelot Cruisers were offered with the same layout: there was a Royal Observatory Lounge off to the right side of the entrance, which was just a fancy way of naming a dinette. It featured a massive U-shaped couch in yellow vinyl (“Harvest Gold” is what they called this particular shade of yellow at the time), with matching drapes, but sitting in sharp contrast against the green (“Avocado”) shag carpet.

The kitchen, aka the Gourmet Galley, was full-size, with a four-burner gas stove and a propane oven above it, a Dometic fridge and freezer unit, the aforementioned dual sink, and enough cabinetry to pack provisions for an extended holiday. Because Edler was looking to offer the complete package, each of the three units came equipped with everything you needed to set off right away, including gold-plated cutlery, cups, plates, pots and pans, and even linens. Even seasonings and a custom poker and gambling set were included, and Edler advertised the sale of each unit with four free steaks awaiting the new owners on the table.

The bathroom was equally fancy and equally ‘70s: dubbed the King and Queen’s Privy, it featured baroque crushed-velvet-style tapestry, a crushed velvet screen to the full-size shower, a toilet, and two ebony china sinks with gold faucets. The green shag carpet extended into the bathroom, which, combined with the velvet shower screen, is bound to make today’s reader roll their eyes hard enough to pull a muscle. But back then, shag carpeting in bathrooms was the norm, and here, it was meant to represent the epitome of luxury.

The bedroom featured a queen-size bed and some wardrobe space across the hallway, as well as a faux masonry wall. You can be as fancy as you like, but you can only say you’ve made it once you have stone walls to go with the extensive wood paneling and shag carpeting.

At the rear was The Great Hall, which was the lounge slash living room, with two couches facing each other, a faux fireplace, and a small coffee table. All these areas could be separated by means of pocket doors, and communication was done by means of an intercom – even the bathroom and the driver’s cab had a wall phone for this purpose. The driver’s cab featured an additional sleeping cot behind the seats.

Moreover, the motorhome had dual fuel tanks, a freshwater tank, and a separate wastewater tank, each of 300 gallons (1,136 liters), air-conditioning, forced-air furnace for heating, a generator and three house batteries for backup. The first unit included a kennel for Edler’s dogs, in the garage that ran almost the entire length of the trailer; the other two units offered storage for a boat and two color-matched Poloron snowmobiles, respectively. Additional storage was available as well. All three units are shown in photos in the gallery.

The most famous of the Camelot Cruisers is the third one, with the Poloron snowmobiles. With a 1974 Ford C-750 tractor up front, it measures 55 feet (16.7 meters) in length, is 12 feet (3.6 meters) high, and weighs over 40,000 pounds (18,143 kg). Power comes from a 391 FT big block V8 engine mated with a rare four-speed automatic transmission, and everything about it is still in working order. In fact, it was last taken on a road trip in late 2021.

It pops up every once in a while on the specialist market, with the most recent being in December 2022, when it sold for $133,000 at an online auction. But the other two motorhomes are also around, after they were discovered in 2017 at a junkyard in Illinois. Richard Rawlings bought both of them for $30,000 and sold them that same year without making any modifications to them. After that, traces of them ran cold. The second unit came with purple shag carpeting and the same yellow for the furniture and still had the boat in the underbelly garage.

The most impressive part about these motorhomes, apart from the fact that someone thought that there would be a market for at least a dozen of them back in the ‘70s, is that they’re still around. Not only that, but they’re still running and remain almost 100% original (probably because they were never put to much use), and this qualifies them for the often-misused title of time capsules. They’re the kind of time capsules that might sprout bell-bottoms and a mustache on you the second you set eyes on them, horrid in their typically ‘70s styling, but awesome time capsules nonetheless.