Pacific/Fiesta Caravans (SA)

[Don Ricardo]

PACIFIC/FIESTA CARAVANS

Manufacturer unknown,
South Australia

This post and those below up to and including 26 February 2016 were originally posted on the Pacific Trailer Coach Company (Nowra, NSW) thread here.

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Photos of a Pacific caravan sighted in South Australia by OlFarts and posted on his behalf:











The date of this van is unknown. The badge on this van is unusual, so the question is - is this van made by the Pacific Trailer Coach Company in Nowra? Dave made a comment on the van being from Nowra when he emailed the photos to me, but I can't see any reference to Nowra on the badge, etc. Maybe Dave can clarify that for us.

Don Ricardo

[harriet]

hi harriet here . amazing a guy from mt. barker in the adelaide hills came to stay at the shack next to our place on Yorke peninsular sth aust . he had a pacific van the same as the one in pics above so looked at my pics same van but diferent rego number.i willpost pics if i can remember how to use muck bucket.

[harriet]

hi harriet here . hi. Dave WELL SET OUT VAN the one next door.I will try to get more pics if i go to his place . I met him through the C. F . S at Mt Barker when we had a fire up his way .yer photo muckup i go to get my grandson to do ////////;;;;;.

[damnapugs]

Hello, I have just worked out how to get on this site.

We are the family that are from Mount Barker that has the Pacific Caravan.

We desperately want to find out more information.

I have quite a few photos to show everyone from our camping trips and are thinking of selling it but have no idea how to get it to the right person.

We have renovated it but left it very simple and as close to the original as possible. It is exact colours as the one in the photos Don Ricardo posted but ours has bunk beds.

Any suggestions?

Cheers

[Don Ricardo]

(Note:  This post and the ones above were originally posted on the thread for Pacific Trailer Coach Company)

Hi Damnapugs,

Welcome to the forum. It's great to have you on board and to see the photos of your Pacific caravan.

Seeing the photos, and from the angles you've taken them, has enabled me to observe a couple of things about about your model Pacific van that weren't evident from the photos Olfarts provided above -  I'll comment on those things below. Lovely photos by the way - makes you want to get out there and go caravanning!

Looking at the photos of your van has caused me to read through this entire thread again, and led me to the conclusion that the posts on the thread are almost certainly about caravans built by two different manufacturers - one being the Pacific Trailer Coach Company in NSW, and the other being the manufacturer of your van and the one seen by Olfarts. So, if that's the case, who built your Pacific van? The answer to that is 'I don't know', but I reckon it was very probably built in South Australia. The basis for this is that:

• Both your van and the one seen by Olfarts were registered in South Australia (sounds a bit silly, but for vintage vans we have discovered that the state they are found in is often a fairly accurate indicator of their state of origin - not always, but very often).
• On his Our Touring Past (OTP) caravan website here, Richard reports having been given a Pacific name plate together with a couple of fibreglass spats with SA and a map of Australia embossed on them.

When I look at the photos provided by Olfarts, I see that the Pacific nameplate over the front window looks as if it has been placed over where another, wider nameplate and/or sticker was, which suggests that the van may have been a product of badge engineering (ie been produced by one company then sold by a another company under the second company's brandname). I would be interested to know if your van shows something similar?

Working on the idea that the vans may have been built by someone other than Pacific Caravans then raises the question of who might have built them. One thought I had was Miami which was an SA caravan building company, and I see that Hughdeani - one of our 1960's/70's caravan identification gurus on this forum - had the same thought on the OTP website. However, while some Miamis seem to come from a similar era stylistically, there are some major styling differences between your Pacific and any of the Miamis we've seen on the forum, including that:

• Your van has a very rounded back-end without any bulkhead over the back window, whereas all the Miamis have a rear bulkhead.
• The body of your van appears to be very slim vertically looking at it from the side, compared to the Miamis. I'm not sure how high yours is internally, but the Miamis look as if they are a bit taller inside. That difference may simply be an optical illusion because of the shape of the vans, but it would be interesting to compare your van to a Miami.
• Your van has a very interesting V-shaped front window, as I can now see the window on the van seen by Olfarts also did. I have not seen any Miamis with that feature, and in fact it is a very uncommon feature on Australian caravans. The only others I can think of with that particular shaped front window are an early 60's Victorian-built Viscount, and a mid-50's Don (and neither of those are related to your van).

At this point in time I can't think of any other vans that are similar enough to the Pacifics to suggest that they may have been built in the same factory (particularly in relation to the above three points), but perhaps someone else on the forum will be able to come up with some ideas.

Regarding build date I am guessing mid-60's because of the overall shape, but that really is just a guess based on other vans which have similar-ish general styling and cladding. Definitely not 50's.

I hope the above may be useful, or perhaps prompt some ideas from other forum members. If you can show us some photos of the inside of the van, that may also stimulate some more thinking.   Sometimes an internal feature or layout may help to identify a van's manufacturer.

In the meantime, based on the fact that I am certain that 'Pacific' and 'Pacific Trailer Coach' are two separate manufacturers/brands, I will create a new 'Pacific' thread in the Down History Lane section and move the posts above about Pacific caravans (including yours) to the new thread - NOW DONE.

Don Ricardo

[rowvan]

HEY GUYS MY VAN IS THE SAME AS THESE ARE . RE REGO PAPERS HAVE ROWVAN ON THEM CHEERS STEVE

[Don Ricardo]

G'day Rowvan,

Welcome to the forum, and very interesting to hear about your van and its registration as a Rowvan.

We don't have any evidence that the Pacific caravans were built by Rowvan, and no photos, etc, of a Rowvan the same shape and design as the Pacific vans. The Pacifics have some pretty distinctive features.  But we're still open to new information.

We'd love to hear more about your van and see some photos at some point. To post photos on the forum you have to do it via an online photo storage website, such as Photobucket or Flickr. You can't use the 'Attachment Button' - it doesn't function on our forum. There are instructions on how to post photos in the 'Forum Guidelines & Helpful Hints' section of the forum.

Looking forward to hearing more about your van.

Don Ricardo

[Don Ricardo]

Photos of John&jacquie's Fiesta branded caravan posted here between 30 January and 4 February 2017:













Lino squares under the carpet:









Although the van is branded 'Fiesta', examination photos indicates that it is of the same design as the 'Pacific' branded caravans shown higher up this thread, in particular the 'slim' profile of the van when seen from the side, the front windows set in a V-shape (which is relatively unusual for an Australian caravan), the low placement of the rear window, and the livery.

One other notable feature of the van are the plastic or fibreglass spats which have a map of Australia and the letters 'SA' imprinted in them.  'SA' most likely refers to South Australia, and to the fact that the vans were very probably built in that state.  None of the other Pacific/Fiesta vans we have seen have these spats:



For further discussion about the origins of the spats see here.

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The 'Fiesta' branding on John&jacquie's shown in this post looks as if it was applied with a stencil, and since the van seems very unlikely to be one of the Mildura Fiestas, the stenciled name might suggest that it has been applied by an individual previous owner who liked the name, or for some other reason.  However, forum member Fiesta previously told us about her small 'Fiesta' branded caravan in March 2015.  One of the most intriguing things about Fiesta's van was that it had the same 'Fiesta' brandname stenciled on the van in the way as John8jacquie's van. So that suggests that the 'Fiesta' branding was not just an individual decision by a previous owner of John&jacquie's van, but perhaps branding applied by a caravan retailer or perhaps the manufacturer who built them.

Unfortunately the photos of Fiesta's van have expired, except for her avatar photo which reveals that, although it is smaller, it has some of the features of the Pacific/Fiesta caravans shown on this thread:



Given that there is a clear connection between the Pacific and Fiesta branded caravans shown on this thread, I have changed the heading of the thread to 'Pacific/Fiesta Caravans'.  We don't know which - if either - of the brandnames was the original, or whether the vans were built by someone and sold under different names by two different retailers, but all of the vans have been found in a South Australia, and it seems likely that that is where they were built.  We just don't know by whom at this point.

Don Ricardo

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Addendum - November 2017: For more recently posted photos of Fiesta's van see here.

[Don Ricardo]

In a series of posts from 31 July 2018 onwards, Paulinaberri posted photos of her Fiesta branded caravan here:









Intriguingly the photos showed that the van was branded as a "Hardy's Fiesta":



Paulinaberri also discovered the serial number '62' on the A-frame:



She reported that another South Australian Fiesta she saw at the Classic and Vintage Caravanners of SA outing at Loxton in July 2018 had a serial number of '201'.

The "Hardy's Fiesta" signage suggests the possibility of a connection between these caravans and Hardy Van caravans. We have evidence of Hardy Van producing their own caravans up until the late 50's or very early 60's, but nothing after that. The Fiesta branded vans may indicate that they continued to produce vans well into the 60's, or perhaps more likely, that they continued as a retailer putting their own 'Fiesta' branding on caravans sourced from another manufacturer.

There has been one other reference to "Hardy's Fiesta" caravans on the forum. Back in March 2006, Mark T reported here that he was going to acquire a '1960 Hardy Fiesta' from a lady in Adelaide. There are no photos of the van, and I'm not sure whether Mark T ever picked up the van - it had no wheels at the time! But it would appear that we now know what type of van he may have been referring to.

Don Ricardo

[Don Ricardo]

Photos of a van rescued by Caruiser from a paddock in Margaret River, WA and posted here on 13 June 2012:

The van bears all the unusual features which were the hallmarks of the caravans which were branded as both Pacifics and Fiestas...except that this one is branded as a 'Uralla'!



V-shaped front windows, characteristic of the Pacific/Fiesta vans:







Interestingly, the van had different profile paneling above the waist line on the front and back...



...and below the waist line front and back:



Pattern on the multi-strand paneling on the side:



Uralla branding above the rear window...



...and the remains of branding below the front window:



There are more photos of the van if you click on the link above.

The 'Uralla' name may have been added to the van by one of its owners...or perhaps the vans were built by someone, and sold by different dealers under various names, with Uralla just being another one of them?

Don Ricardo

[Don Ricardo]

1967 Pacific 19ft tandem two door caravan listed for sale on the Aussie Vintage Caravans Facebook page in September 2021:



















With the two doors, it’s a bit hard to order the photos so they show the correct layout, but hopefully they’re more or less correct. The van has also been kitted out with a lot of electronic gear that I haven’t shown.

The van looks different to the Pacific/Fiesta vans shown higher up this thread, but Hughdeany made the probable connection based on the interior colours, trim and shape. Note the dark cupboard bases with the light doors. That’s an unusual touch and can be seen in the earlier Pacifics/Fiestas.

Don Ricardo