What Was The First Motorhome Ever Made?

The modern motorhome is a fine balance between recreational tradition and modern comforts. There is a reason why pop-top roofs remain so popular, and many people continue to covet the early campervans and Dormobiles as a beautiful template to follow.

However, half a century before this, motorhomes were already being made, with a common origin point, as claimed by Smithsonian Magazine, being the Pierce-Arrow Touring Landau of 1910.

Based on the already extremely luxurious and expensive Model 66, the Touring Landau could seat up to seven people, featured fold-down seats to form a bed and even had bathroom facilities.

It cost the equivalent of over £250,000 and was designed largely to act as makeshift accommodation in places away from the more luxurious hotels that such an owner was likely to go to.

However, whilst it is commonly cited as the first motorhome ever made, this does not appear to be the case, depending on your definition of the concept. The year before, self-built custom kits were available to convert the Ford Model T into a campervan.

Ignoring horse-drawn caravans, the earliest motorhomes predate the Pierce-Arrow by over a decade and were rather unusually powered by steam engines rather than petrol.

The oldest of these that we know of was the Grande Diligence of 1896, powered by a steam engine and built in Paris by Carrosserie Industrielle for the Russian Duke of Oldenburg. However, it is also a dubious case as the engine is separate from the accommodation.

At the time, France believed that steam was the future not only of railway locomotion but also of road transport, but this ultimately did not pan out.

The first to combine the engine and the accommodation was the Quo Vadis from 1900, which worked to an extent but required so much water that it could only travel alongside rivers.

A more successful follow-up was the petrol-powered Passe Partout of 1902, which was designed for a rather unsuccessful round-the-world trip.

The first production motorhome was the De Dietrich Touring Limousine of 1904, which could store significant amounts of luggage and had seats that could convert to a bed.