Something about the "Christmas Vacation" RV "Christmas Vacation" RV thread that I posted the other day got me thinking more about that brand of RV. I watch that silly movie every Christmas and something about it sorta' stuck out in my brain... what was this unique vehicle that was striking a cord with me?
In googling and reading about it, their was something that I remember about it from decades ago. Sometime in the early to mid 70's I was a kid who used to spend my allowance on car and truck magazines... I always remembered the story about a vehicle builder who shortened a motorhome, turned it into a 4x4 and ran the Baja 1000 in it. How cool is that !
Many years later I had always wished i still had that magazine.... but thanks to the internet I was able to find it! I felt like a 10 year old again!
Meet 'Debbie,' the off-road racing RV that conquered the Baja 1000
"You're kidding."
That was off-road legend Bill Stroppe's reaction when first approached by Condor Coach in September 1968. In fairness, you'd probably have thought the execs were joking, too. Running a luxury Ford motor home in the Baja 1000? The treacherous, boulder-strewn trail between Esenada and La Paz?
But Condor was serious. And they wanted to finish. So began the mission to transform an 11,000-lbs recreational vehicle into one fully-fledged, coulee-conquering, dirt-slinging, 400-hp off-road racing machine.
The Condor folks had come to the right man. Stroppe's career began in boat racing when he slapped a flathead six-cylinder onto a homebuilt, Navy-surplus plywood hull and raised all kinds of hell at the Henry Ford Memorial Regatta in 1947. That stunt earned him factory support from Lincoln-Mercury, which he used to win the Carrera Panamericana (twice), run stock cars at Pikes Peak, dominate USAC, and begin pioneering off-road kit for Ford back when the Baja 1000 was sanctioned by NORRA. His Long Beach garage had been absorbed by NASCAR magnate Holman & Moody in the mid-1960s, so it had everything.
Still, building a 100-mph motor home proved easier said than done.
Condor corporate insisted the wood veneer, water heater, twin beds, stove, refrigerator, shower and toilet all stay intact. Even the A/C and carpeting were to be left untouched โฆ because press photos. See, this was a top-of-the-line luxury coach, complete with an eye-watering price tag (roughly $177,220 in today's money), and Condor wanted it to look the part. Stroppe just laughed and took the optimist's perspective: Hey, it'd be the first rally car with a kitchen sink, right?
The RV's chassis was eventually shortened to 20 feet, but given its elephantine curb weight, the stock Ford-sourced 390-cid V8 wasn't going to cut it. Serious firepower was in order. Stroppe's solution came in 460 cubic inches of balanced and blueprinted Lincoln cast iron, dyno-rated at 400 hp. That channeled power into the Art Carr-shifted C6 trans, Napco front diff, and two-speed Eaton rear axle, with a monstrous 16-inch wheel and tire combo. For crash protection, Stroppe erected a jungle gym from cabin to galley, anchored by nine separate bars, each 10 feet tall and 8 feet across. At last count, he'd used 250 feet of steel roll-cage tubing.
Finally, the V8 powerplant was converted to run on propane with an experimental dry-gas setup, just in case a 6-ton race-prepped RV wasn't already bizarre enough.
Laden with 110 gallons of fuel, 80 gallons of drinking water, and two NASCAR harnesses locked into its main roll hoop, the Baja Condor was christened 'Debbie Special' and made for Mexico. Its maiden voyage was the 200 some-odd miles between Stroppe's California shop and the race's starting line in Esenada.
On Halloween morning, 1969, Don Bass was anxious.
He'd worked on the NASCAR circuit prior to becoming a sort of gonzo R&D man at Imperial Machine Products Co., inventors of a new propane carburetor being shopped to Ford. He'd never run Baja, but its lore was not lost on him. At dawn on Friday, alongside Condor CEO Wes Thomas, Bass belted into the passenger seat of a lifted, 400-hp motor home and lined up to tackle 832 precarious desert miles en route to La Paz. At least he'd have a roof over his head when something awful happened.
But at 12:15 pm, his worry turned into embarrassment when the enormous RV rolled onto Baja's starting platformโthe flagger looked over its drivers, both wearing crash helmets, and rolled his eyes. The Condor trundled off.
Thomas (also bereft of off-road racing experience) had thought to bring a flashing red emergency signal, which he mounted on Debbie's roof. Siren blaring, the boys barreled through Baja's paved section at 90 mph; when they hit dirt, the preposterous motor homeโwhich had started 255th on a 265-vehicle gridโpassed its first competitor. Swaying in the crosswinds, kicking up dirt, and scrambling out of gullies, Bass and Thomas forged ahead to Camalu, where the 10-foot-tall Condor couldn't clear Baja's first checkpoint and crashed through the NORRA scoring outpost, taking rope and flag with it.
But the pinnacle of absurdity came a few hours later when one of Debbie's tie rods, which had already been mended twice, finally quit. Bass and Thomas radioed into Condor Coach President Walt Kiefer, who promptly flew his twin-engined Beachcraft Baron airplane to their location, swooped up the damaged suspension, and brought it to nearby Santa Enez for repair.
Yes, the least competitive vehicle on Baja's grid had 240-mph air support.
There aren't many records of the off-road Condor because NORRA required a sub-48-hour time for official classification. When the very dirty, very dented Debbie limped into Le Paz at 9:00 am Monday morning, more than 90 hours had lapsed since Baja '69 had commenced. First across the line was a radical Ford Bronco driven by Larry Minor and Rod Hall, prepared byโyou guessed itโBill Stroppe. Their time? 20 hours, 48 minutes, 10 seconds.
Condor continued touring Debbie Special around North America's off-road race circuit into the mid-1970s, appearing at Bajas '70 and '71, the Mint 400, and Pikes Peak. Journalists rode along, napping during long repairs periods, scribbling stories later read by well-to-do fly fishermen and weekend woodsmen, who then phoned Condor with down payments.
By nearly every conceivable measureโnamely finishing Baja some 70 hours after the race winner and 42 hours outside of classificationโDebbie was a miserable failure. Yet as an oddball marketing scheme, it was heroic. And while Bill Stroppe's four-wheel-drive Bronco may've won in Mexico, there's still some question as to whether or not it was the most impressive vehicle he built during 1969.
Like a rally-racing motor home, success is a strange beast, isn't it?
(edited to add more images)
In googling and reading about it, their was something that I remember about it from decades ago. Sometime in the early to mid 70's I was a kid who used to spend my allowance on car and truck magazines... I always remembered the story about a vehicle builder who shortened a motorhome, turned it into a 4x4 and ran the Baja 1000 in it. How cool is that !
Many years later I had always wished i still had that magazine.... but thanks to the internet I was able to find it! I felt like a 10 year old again!
Meet 'Debbie,' the off-road racing RV that conquered the Baja 1000
"You're kidding."
That was off-road legend Bill Stroppe's reaction when first approached by Condor Coach in September 1968. In fairness, you'd probably have thought the execs were joking, too. Running a luxury Ford motor home in the Baja 1000? The treacherous, boulder-strewn trail between Esenada and La Paz?
But Condor was serious. And they wanted to finish. So began the mission to transform an 11,000-lbs recreational vehicle into one fully-fledged, coulee-conquering, dirt-slinging, 400-hp off-road racing machine.
The Condor folks had come to the right man. Stroppe's career began in boat racing when he slapped a flathead six-cylinder onto a homebuilt, Navy-surplus plywood hull and raised all kinds of hell at the Henry Ford Memorial Regatta in 1947. That stunt earned him factory support from Lincoln-Mercury, which he used to win the Carrera Panamericana (twice), run stock cars at Pikes Peak, dominate USAC, and begin pioneering off-road kit for Ford back when the Baja 1000 was sanctioned by NORRA. His Long Beach garage had been absorbed by NASCAR magnate Holman & Moody in the mid-1960s, so it had everything.
Still, building a 100-mph motor home proved easier said than done.
Condor corporate insisted the wood veneer, water heater, twin beds, stove, refrigerator, shower and toilet all stay intact. Even the A/C and carpeting were to be left untouched โฆ because press photos. See, this was a top-of-the-line luxury coach, complete with an eye-watering price tag (roughly $177,220 in today's money), and Condor wanted it to look the part. Stroppe just laughed and took the optimist's perspective: Hey, it'd be the first rally car with a kitchen sink, right?
The RV's chassis was eventually shortened to 20 feet, but given its elephantine curb weight, the stock Ford-sourced 390-cid V8 wasn't going to cut it. Serious firepower was in order. Stroppe's solution came in 460 cubic inches of balanced and blueprinted Lincoln cast iron, dyno-rated at 400 hp. That channeled power into the Art Carr-shifted C6 trans, Napco front diff, and two-speed Eaton rear axle, with a monstrous 16-inch wheel and tire combo. For crash protection, Stroppe erected a jungle gym from cabin to galley, anchored by nine separate bars, each 10 feet tall and 8 feet across. At last count, he'd used 250 feet of steel roll-cage tubing.
Finally, the V8 powerplant was converted to run on propane with an experimental dry-gas setup, just in case a 6-ton race-prepped RV wasn't already bizarre enough.
Laden with 110 gallons of fuel, 80 gallons of drinking water, and two NASCAR harnesses locked into its main roll hoop, the Baja Condor was christened 'Debbie Special' and made for Mexico. Its maiden voyage was the 200 some-odd miles between Stroppe's California shop and the race's starting line in Esenada.
On Halloween morning, 1969, Don Bass was anxious.
He'd worked on the NASCAR circuit prior to becoming a sort of gonzo R&D man at Imperial Machine Products Co., inventors of a new propane carburetor being shopped to Ford. He'd never run Baja, but its lore was not lost on him. At dawn on Friday, alongside Condor CEO Wes Thomas, Bass belted into the passenger seat of a lifted, 400-hp motor home and lined up to tackle 832 precarious desert miles en route to La Paz. At least he'd have a roof over his head when something awful happened.
But at 12:15 pm, his worry turned into embarrassment when the enormous RV rolled onto Baja's starting platformโthe flagger looked over its drivers, both wearing crash helmets, and rolled his eyes. The Condor trundled off.
Thomas (also bereft of off-road racing experience) had thought to bring a flashing red emergency signal, which he mounted on Debbie's roof. Siren blaring, the boys barreled through Baja's paved section at 90 mph; when they hit dirt, the preposterous motor homeโwhich had started 255th on a 265-vehicle gridโpassed its first competitor. Swaying in the crosswinds, kicking up dirt, and scrambling out of gullies, Bass and Thomas forged ahead to Camalu, where the 10-foot-tall Condor couldn't clear Baja's first checkpoint and crashed through the NORRA scoring outpost, taking rope and flag with it.
But the pinnacle of absurdity came a few hours later when one of Debbie's tie rods, which had already been mended twice, finally quit. Bass and Thomas radioed into Condor Coach President Walt Kiefer, who promptly flew his twin-engined Beachcraft Baron airplane to their location, swooped up the damaged suspension, and brought it to nearby Santa Enez for repair.
Yes, the least competitive vehicle on Baja's grid had 240-mph air support.
There aren't many records of the off-road Condor because NORRA required a sub-48-hour time for official classification. When the very dirty, very dented Debbie limped into Le Paz at 9:00 am Monday morning, more than 90 hours had lapsed since Baja '69 had commenced. First across the line was a radical Ford Bronco driven by Larry Minor and Rod Hall, prepared byโyou guessed itโBill Stroppe. Their time? 20 hours, 48 minutes, 10 seconds.
Condor continued touring Debbie Special around North America's off-road race circuit into the mid-1970s, appearing at Bajas '70 and '71, the Mint 400, and Pikes Peak. Journalists rode along, napping during long repairs periods, scribbling stories later read by well-to-do fly fishermen and weekend woodsmen, who then phoned Condor with down payments.
By nearly every conceivable measureโnamely finishing Baja some 70 hours after the race winner and 42 hours outside of classificationโDebbie was a miserable failure. Yet as an oddball marketing scheme, it was heroic. And while Bill Stroppe's four-wheel-drive Bronco may've won in Mexico, there's still some question as to whether or not it was the most impressive vehicle he built during 1969.
Like a rally-racing motor home, success is a strange beast, isn't it?
(edited to add more images)
