Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Renault Traffic Campervan in Malaysia

While passing through a housing area in the heart of KL, I came across this campervan based on a Renault Traffic van. To most Malaysians, the shape of this van is better known as Inokom Permas, the locally assembled version. What really caught my eye is the full sized split unit aircon compressor sitting at the back of the high roof. The base van is a short wheel based version  and the roof seems to be an add-on unit rather than the original high roof that is available in the Inokom version. I quite certain that the aircon was a locally installed unit, given that most campervan that originated from Europe do not come fitted with any aircon.

Update: Thanks to Mark's eagle eye, this camper was revealed to be a San Remo Model Holdsworth campervan, when I followed the link shown on the spare type, I found this blog by Holdsworth  Owners Club. Below is an extract from the history of Holdsworth

History of Holdsworth Motorhomes

Richard Holdsworth started the compervan conversion business in 1968 with a self converted VW Kombi for personal use. Their conversion attracted enough interest from potential customer to prompt them to start their "Richard Holdsworth Conversion" business in a lockup garage (incidentally, I work for HP in my day job, which has its origin in a garage as well ). They soon outgrown the lockup garage and moved into a shared facility offered by a VW spares company at Ashford Middlesex.

Such was the growth their business, they have to move a new factory at Woodley, Berkshire in 1972.
The company was doing well right up to 1980's. It went into the business of minibus conversion in the 1990's, unfortunately it was caught stranded with too much stock when major deal of supplying several thousands of minibus fell through. It became Cockburn Holdsworth for a period of time but it ceased trading as campervan conversion concern soon after that. However it's legacy is currently preserved by the Holdsworth Owners Club in England. Interesting how the dots connect from Malaysia to England.
Richard Holdworth is the Honary President of The Holdsworth Owners Club, and, as well as advising many present day motorhome manufacturers, he has now become a novelist and is at present working on his second book.

This is a San Remo model based on Renault Traffic van


On first glance, it looks like a local Inokom Permas.

The spare type cover revealed an interesting story!

2 comments:

mark ruffin melaka said...

Saw the spare tire name on the back? http://holdsworthownersclub.blogspot.com/

Boo Long said...

Trafic.. One 'F'. A French word.
Not the English word Traffic with two 'F's.