The Original Corvette’s Body-Engineer Designed This Awesome Forgotten Camper

Ellis J. Premo isn’t a huge name in General Motors history, but it’s an important one. Premo was one of the men responsible for bringing the Corvette into reality with a fiberglass body. Later, he would become the Chief Engineer for all of Chevrolet. Before all of this, Ellis was an inventor and engineer working within the halls of Chevy. Over 85 years ago, Premo built a cozy camper for his family. The camper was never used by Premo, instead spending 72 years of its life in a hangar. It was used just a few times before becoming a museum piece. Now, you can own what’s essentially a brand-new camper from 1938.

I’ve known about this camper’s existence for over a year. It has been in the collection of the Volo Auto Museum of Volo, Illinois for the past 11 years and I got to look it over a few times over the years. The camper used to sit in the museum’s small camper display. I’ve long wondered about the camper’s story, but the museum didn’t display any information about it. Now, I’ve been able to piece together what happened with this camper and the man who built it. If you have enough money, you can buy it!

Ellis J. Premo

If you’re a fan of the first-generation Corvette, known as the C1, you’ve possibly heard of this name before. Premo is credited with being the Corvette’s Body Engineer and is one of the men responsible for the fact that Corvettes have curvaceous fiberglass bodies.

According to a paper Premo presented to the Society of Automotive Engineers, in his early career, Premo received automotive apprentice training at Chrysler’s Highland Park plant in Detroit. In 1935, he joined General Motors in the Chevrolet Engineering department. I could not find much information about Premo’s duties before the Corvette, but a patent filing gives a clue.

In 1946, Premo, alongside engineer Ronald J Waterbury, filed a patent for a truck cab mount. In the patent, the men explain that trucks of the day had chassis rails that twisted and weaved in response to the terrain under the vehicle. It was necessary to limit the twisting that could be subjected to the cab. Too much force exerted on the cab could damage it. The inventors’ solution was a cab mount system that included a swinging arm in the middle and isolators. When the frame flexed, the cab mounts and the swinging arm allowed the cab to ride somewhat independently of the frame. Check out the patent drawing:

The trail goes cold from there to the development of the Corvette. As the book Chevrolets of the 1950s: A Decade of Technical Innovation describes, the Corvette almost didn’t have a body of fiberglass. When the Corvette was green-lit for development, fiberglass as a building material was seeing increasing use. In World War II, the book writes, fiberglass was used for aircraft radomes. After the war, the use of fiberglass for aircraft components became even more commonplace.

On the ground, glass manufacturer Owens Corning teamed up with Henry Kaiser and aviation pioneer William Stout. Out of this partnership came a 1946 prototype car designed by Howard “Dutch” Darrin and a car for Stout. Darrin designed another fiberglass prototype that would go into production as the Kaiser Darrin sports car. Just 435 were ever built, plus another six prototypes. The book continues by pointing out that the 1950s were full of fiberglass-bodied cars, none of them reaching true mass production.

One of the inspirations for the Corvette’s fiberglass body was the vehicles constructed by the Glasspar Corporation, a company then known for its fiberglass boats. Glasspar built about 100 G2 fiberglass sports cars plus fiberglass bodies for the Woodill Wildfire sports car. One of Glasspar’s other builds was the Alembic 1, named after Glasspar’s logo. This car was featured in a 1952 issue of Life magazine, where it caught the attention of GM engineers. The vehicle was also put on display and Harley Earl was reportedly impressed with the finish and dent resistance of fiberglass.

Naugatuck Chemical, where Glasspar got its fiberglass, demonstrated how GM could use a fender to create a mold that would be used to make an identical fiberglass part. GM Styling and Chevrolet Engineering ate that up like catnip, learning that fiberglass would be excellent for building experimental cars rapidly, rather than the much slower process of hammering out custom steel panels.

GM’s engineers began experimenting with fiberglass. However, as the book notes, the engineers still worked from the idea that fiberglass would help with cranking out concept cars, not production cars. This was also convenient as GM decided to proceed with its Motorama traveling show. Fiberglass allowed GM’s engineers to get the Corvette show car into Motorama quickly.

In a paper submitted to the SAE in 1954, Zora Arkus-Duntov noted that while the show car was built with a fiberglass body, development continued with the expectation of using steel. However, the public showed a lot of interest in fiberglass and from a technical perspective, making a mass-market vehicle with a fiberglass body was possible. However, GM brass wasn’t sure about fiberglass. The man credited with getting GM to commit to fiberglass is Robert Morrison, the founder of the Molded Fiberglass Company. The National Corvette Museum continues:

Robert Morrison is most recognized as the man who creatively developed the molded fiber glass (MFG) process for Corvette’s fiberglass body. In 1954, the Chevrolet Corvette became the first production automobile with a molded fiber glass reinforced plastic body after Morrison convinced General Motors that reinforced plastic had a use in the automotive history.

When Chevrolet agreed to proceed with this material, Morrison initiated all of the necessary financing, production facilities, engineering support, tooling and production personnel to make it happen. He partnered with automotive engineers as well as raw material suppliers which resolved Chevrolet’s concerns about a production site, equipment and scheduling.

As the cooperative process developed, the basement of Morrison’s home in Ashtabula, Ohio, became an impromptu design center for the 1953 Corvette Convertible fiber glass parts. MFG employees and GM’s engineers worked side by side on a ping-pong pool table, until suitable business space was established.

One of the engineers tasked with making that fiberglass body a reality was Premo. At the time, he was Chevrolet’s Chief Body Engineer and Premo was joined by another engineer on a mission to learn fiberglass production techniques. The engineers found themselves at Lunn Laminates, Winner Manufacturing, and Morrison’s Molded Fiberglass Company, where they took in the new kind of manufacturing to take back home to GM. Fiberglass wasn’t an instant success for GM, and it took a lot of trial and error before the engineers could create singular panels, let alone whole bodies.

However, they pulled it off, and the Corvette would become famous for its fiberglass body. Premo was instrumental in helping Chevrolet make it real. By 1963, Premo would earn a spot as the Chief Engineer of Chevrolet, finding himself in charge of development teams for both cars and trucks.

Premo’s Camper

Now, let’s flip our calendars back 30 years to Premo’s early years at Chevrolet. It’s 1938, and Premo was an engineer at Chevrolet for three years. According to a story written by Premo’s grandson, Premo decided to build a camper that he could use next to a lake with his family. Unfortunately, due to his obligations to Chevrolet, he never got around to using the camper. Instead, it was parked in a hangar in Michigan. Reportedly, when Premo was nearing his death, he decided to pass the camper on to his family in hopes that it would get used.

The trailer would stay in that hangar until 2010 when it was liberated by a buyer and then used as a camper just a couple of times. Volo picked the camper up in 2012 and it has been a part of the collection ever since. Sadly, it sounds like Volo is running out of space because it’s selling this camper to make room for more.

So, what you’re looking at is an 85-year-old camper that was reportedly used just 5 or 6 times in its whole life. The rest of the time has been spent sitting in a hangar, in Volo’s display, or getting towed by a matching 1938 pickup truck to car shows. That’s an easy life for a camper! Volo says it’s unrestored and aside from some areas where the paint may have been patched up, mostly original. Given that the camper has essentially been pampered its whole existence, I’d believe it.

According to Volo, the trailer is wood-framed and the siding is believed to be Masonite. This material, which consists of steam-cooked and pressure-molded wood fibers turned into a hard board, was a common building material for walls, canoes, and siding back then. The Masonite appears to be braced with metal and there’s a steel frame underneath with a leaf spring suspension.

The interior is said to be in mostly original shape, including the original curtains and varnished wood. The trailer’s original 110V electrical system also remains.

The kitchen is a real time capsule. On the wood countertop sits a portable single-burner stove. The sink looks elegant and it’s operated with a hand pump. That pump pulls water from a heavy tank located in the cabinet under the sink. Apparently, everything in the cabinets is believed to be original, including the dishes.

Across from the sink is a convertible surface that turns into a Preway two-burner stove. A metal backsplash prevents you from lighting the camper on fire while cooking. Heat comes from that single-burner stove as well as an electric heater. The pièce de résistance of the camper is the giant ceramic icebox. Volo says these are often found broken and worn out, but since this camper was never really used, the icebox is perfect.

Unfortunately, you do get a bathroom, but the toilet appears to be a metal bucket with a lid. I’m pretty sure that’s worse than any “shitcase” we’ve featured.

Volo wants $29,998 for the camper. I’m not sure if that’s a good price or not. On one hand, the trailer is an incredible museum piece and time capsule. On the other hand, it might be frustrating to use it as a real camper without ruining the original equipment. I know I wouldn’t want to read the Morning Dump from a metal bucket. Either way, I love the trailer. It’s always fascinating to see perfect examples of how vehicles were built several decades ago.

(Images: Volo Auto Museum, unless otherwise noted.)