[TylerE]

They're basically cut-rate mobile homes on truck chassis.

This vid is a great illustration of both how easy it is to get into an accident, and how much damage even a glancing blow does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuRtNajq-Yo

[hinkley]

Community has an episode at the end where they trash a camper. It seemed comedy driven at first but the longer I looked at it and campers the more plausible that scene seemed. It’s foam and plywood.

Edit: I finally clicked through the autopian link from up thread and it’s reminding me there’s a guy I watch sometimes who does conversion vans. All of his stuff is built around those extruded aluminum rails. He hasn’t figured out how to make use of those last few cubic feet yet but he seems to do a good job and they’re fairly sturdy. Last I watched he was perfecting his showers.

I now wonder what it would look like if he converted buses instead of shop vans. You have a superstructure that might actually survive a hit, they’re already set up for AC units, you “just” need to build repeatable interiors. But you need much more shop space, time, and capital to do something of that sort.

[macintux]

Mercedes writes about all sorts of interesting conversions, like these transit buses.

https://www.theautopian.com/this-1948-gm-old-look-transit-bu...

https://www.theautopian.com/how-a-couple-turned-a-gillig-tra...