Small campers are a great way to get out and enjoy a trip, but in a small form factor that’s easy to tow. Many of the smallest hard-sided campers out there today measure around 13 feet total in length. That’s just enough room for one, maybe two people to sleep without wanting to kill each other. But, you can get even smaller. This 1964 Fireball Friendship 11 is just 11 feet long and weighs a featherweight 1,050 pounds.
Every once in a while, I search for a hard-sided camper that the least capable cars on the road could tow. A lot of Americans own vehicles not nearly capable enough to tow a traditional travel trailer, but maybe they could tow something light.
For example, the Toyota Corolla Cross isn’t the smallest vehicle out there, but its tow rating is just 1,500 pounds. That locks it out even wee little campers such as a Coleman Rubicon 1200RK or even a Scamp 13. That’s right, you can’t even tow the most popular fiberglass trailer with a Corolla Cross.
However, you could tow something like the Fireball Friendship 11, if you could find one.
Fireball, But Not The Drink
I haven’t been able to find a ton of history out there about Fireball. A restorer of vintage campers claims to have gathered print information about the company and says it started in California in about 1952 by Joseph Kurmann as Kurmann Trailer Manufacturing Company. I have been able to confirm that Kurmann was building trailers as early as 1955 and that his company was renamed Fireball in 1956.
The company’s trailers were given space race-themed names and often had some unique features. Fireball trailers were available in total lengths as short as just 8 feet long. Like some manufacturers, the company also had smaller trailers with an upper berth for a bed. On the large end, Fireball sold trailers like the Commodore 33. This trailer was 33 feet long, but just 14 feet of it was living space. The rest? It was a covered area to park your boat. It was a camper and a boat trailer in one!
This particular Fireball Friendship 11 is a show trailer that was displayed at SEMA and featured in Vintage Camper Trailers Magazine. A sign from the trailer’s SEMA display says Fireball trailers didn’t put much of a dent into the camper market, and many were sold to the U.S. government to be used as temporary housing. It didn’t help that Fireball trailers were built and sold on the West Coast and Midwest. So, it’s possible that someone in, say, Maine, never heard of these trailers.
It’s not known exactly what happened to Fireball, but the company did manage to produce some small motorhomes before its factories shuttered in the 1980s. Kurmann passed in the early 1990s, ending the story of Fireball. The owner of a Fireball trailer purchased the rights to the Fireball name and mark sometime after 2014.
Super Compact
The trailer up for grabs today is a 1964 Fireball Friendship 11. At first, I thought the pictures of this trailer had to be compressed or something. Nope, that really is the trailer you’re looking at here! The Friendship 11 has a bumper-to-tongue length of 11 feet and a box around 9 feet. To put this into perspective, my U-Haul CT13 is a total of 13 feet long with a 10-foot box. My U-Haul is already pretty small inside, yet this is even smaller while still being a usable camper. Somehow, it even has far more features, too.
Like many “canned ham” style campers of the day, the Friendship 11 is wood-framed and features an exterior shell built out of corrugated aluminum. A design touch I like with this trailer is the metalwork toward the front. Was it necessary? No! Is it beautiful? Absolutely. Also notable about the interior design is how the corrugated metal is broken up with pleated metal. It’s another unnecessary touch that goes just a little bit further in making the trailer pleasing to look at.
Moving inside, you’re presented with a surprisingly packed interior. The seller says this space is hiding a toilet, a propane-powered ice box, a stove, and a sink. The dinette area transforms into the camper’s main bed. There’s also a drop-down bunk bed that fits either a single adult or two kids. The ideal owners of a Friendship 11 were an adult couple.
The trailer is said to have been restored and features a new floor, interior, glass, trailer jack, wheels, seats, roof vent, toilet, appliances, and front air-conditioner. It even gets period-correct Coker white wall tires, though, it would appear the toilet is of the cassette variety.
Still, you’re getting quite a lot in such a small space. Add an outdoor shower and you’ll have everything you need for a decent camping weekend. The seller appears to be correct in their assertion that this is a rare trailer. I found no other Friendship 11s for sale, but I did find this adorable 8-foot Fireball.
The seller says the trailer is 6 feet wide and 8 feet tall while offering enough headroom for the “average adult” to stand in. I would expect headroom of just over 6 feet. Most importantly, it weighs just 1,050 pounds! That doesn’t make this the lightest trailer out there, but it means so many vehicles can tow it.
If you think you’re the right kind of buyer for the 1964 Fireball Friendship 11, it’ll cost you $12,500 from the seller in La Crescenta, California. I’d love to see something like an AMC Gremlin or some other small-ish classic American car towing this.
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Have fun backing it up. Such a short trailer is so touchy that you have zero room for error. A small correction becomes a huge swing on the trailer end – it’s frustrating to say the least.
My idea of wheeled hell on earth.
I wouldn’t advise eating beans inside that thing.
I would hulk my way of such a small spot.
That’s not a Canned Ham camper, that’s Canned Anchovies. *an acquired taste*
Finally a camper I can tow around with my Miata. Now if it only had a real bathroom. The cassette toilet hiding in a cabinet doesn’t count for me anymore.
I’m willing to bet that if you’re using the toilet, you get to make eye contact with eeeeeeeveeeryone inside the camper.
There’ll be someone in the Netherlands with a smaller car, who tows one of these to the south of France every summer.
Sorry, but no thanks. I’d be claustrophobic in this. I’ve been in tents with bigger windows. This is past the line where cozy turns to crush.
I dig the quilted metal accents. They add a nice touch of comfy country refinement to the overall look.
My truck driving grandmother would’ve been proud to tow this thing around.
RIP Large Marge.
One thing to keep in mind is weight isn’t everything. For an old style squared off profile like that, wind resistance is the biggest factor. I have a small 2100 lb travel trailer. And due to the wind resistance, towing it is more work than towing my 5×8 utility trailer loaded up to 3000 lbs. Also handling in crosswinds with those tall flat sides is a consideration. Trying one out would be best.
Right-o! Aerodynamics continually teaches us that a short object has more drag than a longer one. That’s one reason small cars are disappearing. And side winds would pound hard on this trailer. I’ve never felt sidewind effects towing my Scamp 16, which furls a big sail with its tall body and small wheels. I think it’s because of the rounded corners and roof edges. Air slips around these surfaces, with no corners to hang onto. We stopped making airplanes with square sides after the Ford Trimotor, I believe.
The Short Skyvan is a short boxy airplane. There are also longer versions of it.
I’ve actually seen one of these, a ’58 if I remember right. They are tiny. Made our 15 foot Aristocrat look huge. by comparison. And yeah, it was a couple with a dog camping in it. They were towing it with a matching ’58 Chevy panel truck.
Metric units, thanks.
It’s 44 crumpets long
How does that convert to Smoots?
1 Smoot is 5′ 7″.
But how many crumpets = 1 Smoot?
Is that all you do? Come here to complain about units? Come on man, feet and inches are used by the US and people in Canada, Mexico, and the UK are familiar with them as well.
Heck, the last time you complained that it was a Japanese trailer and therefore should have metric units… this is American, on an American site. Just enter it into Google.
It’s a website aimed at a global audience. The author should consider that.
11 feet = 1.16 D-Day casket flags
Do you use a church key to open this thing up?
Even smaller than this is the Fiat 126p (Polski fiat) trailer. I haven’t seen one in the U.S. but you’ll see them peaking out of people’s backyards from time to time
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/35/5a/ae/355aaeb951563f86a6eb9bfa4c018ec9.jpg
Niewiadów n126(?), still in production. It is small, but I don’t think it is that short. Nowadays 750 kg, which is the max loaded weight for trailers without brakes in EU. Which might also mean that it does not require yearly checks, depending on the country, obvs. Has been sold under different names since the 70’s.
Fun trivia: someone claimed that over the years the fiberglass box has been placed both ways on the trailer frame. Could be nonsense but hard to tell…
very cool, actually – I like the setup and the sizes
So Mercedes I am curious on your thoughts on this because with a few exceptions you have, like me an affinity for smaller cars and aren’t constantly tooling around in Bro-Dozers or giant 3 row SUV’s (VW Touaregs not withstanding). I never got the whole tiny trailer thing although they are so cute whenever I see one of these stories I get an itch.
In 2012 my wife and I had some cash lying around and wanted to enjoy Colorado where we live more so we purchased a trailer. We had been tent camping for 15 years and wanted something that was just plain more convenient. I had an F150 (2005 4 door Lariat 5.4 4wd) at the time so towing really didn’t even factor in. What did was our love of the out doors. We ended up buying a really nice high end Flagstaff tent camper with all the bells and whistles (about 21 feet). We figured it was a great compromise.
Unfortunately, after 2 years the F150 started imploding. Within 2 months it needed a full rebuild of the transmission, new heads (due to thread issues), a whole front end, brakes, tires and all 4 window regulators. I ditched it and figured I would find a nice SUV to replace it. Since it was only a little over 3000lbs it wouldn’t be a problem.
At the same time, my insane FTL was having trouble pulling his tag along with his Rubicon so he bought a tiny trailer maybe a little bigger then this one. I took it camping twice and found it way way less convenient then my tent camper because your “Inside time” was really limited to sleeping or “taking refuge” from bad weather.
My issue now is that my current 2 car household doesn’t have a rig that can pull my tent camper. I have a 2.0l Santa Fe that I am afraid won’t be a good tow vehicle since it is a FWD/AWD light duty 2l turbo 4 and maxes our about at my trailer weight and my Supra which… never mind…
Conventional wisdom says I either dump the trailer (that has now been sitting in my garage for a decade unused) and get something like these guys that my Santa Fe can tow easily, do I dump my sports car that I love or the Santa Fe and buy a full time body on frame or HD SUV like a 4Runner or the like to be able to tow my trailer OR do I just buy something old and cheap like a GMT800 Tahoe and just use it as a tow vehicle? I guess the last choice, and this is where I wonder what the audience says, is do I just tow my tent camper with the Santa Fe and let the chips fall where they may?
The other question would be, would maybe a vintage canned ham be lighter then my tent camper?
Anyway, I love the idea of being able to go camping from a smaller vehicle, its what I tried to do but now I am in what I feel to be the Kobishi Maru (no win scenario). Everything is so expensive and to buy a car just to tow 5 weekends a year kind of sucks.
Wow! 10 years of storing anything you cannot use (tent camper) is a long time. It will be hard for someone to tell you what to do in your situation, me included.
If it was me, I’d try to do an inventory of what you have right now (2 cars and a camper, storage space, etc) and value it financially and emotionally. Then, see what you “need” for your daily transportation, and lastly try to add in your “wants”, sports car or camper or maybe skimping somewhere else to get both. Emotions always get the better of us when we just store stuff long term hoping to get back to it someday.
Good luck
Buy a motorcycle camper – generally a good rule of thumb that if a motorcycle can pull it, any car can pull it.
It might be worth just renting a motorhome even if it’s a couple weekends a year, but you’d just have the weigh that cost vs. the costs of a larger truck or a smaller camper. If you do a smaller camper, I find that the Clam Quickset screen room was a great investment for us to get extra space. It lets us enclose and cover a picnic table or a couple chairs, and it takes up very little storage space in our camper and takes just a couple minutes to set up and take down.
We’ve had a vintage 1966 16′ Canned Ham for about 10 years. It has a 13′ box and weighs about 1900 pounds. We towed it with an Acadia and Traverse and camped with our 3 kids in it. I wouldn’t have wanted to go smaller on the vehicle. The camper is a brick when towing, but at least it has electric brakes. You do have compromises with a vintage, but they don’t really depreciate. For example, I never felt comfortable towing it above 60 mph, and I would have to plan my tows to avoid rain because I didn’t trust the window and door seals at highway speeds to not leak. I also don’t have a bathroom, shower, hot water, or storage tanks in mine, so it’s a bit rustic. I did at least add a removable AC system so we could be more comfortable. We still have the vintage, but I should really sell it because I haven’t used it since buying a newer camper. Some notes if buying a vintage… there are a lot of them out there that are in really bad shape under the surface. Most have leaked at some point, and if they haven’t been rebuilt at some point, they probably have at least a few areas of rot in the walls or ceiling. If the interior is painted, it’s likely hiding damage. Find one that has been re-done right, and that has photos of the process. You’ll still get a better deal than buying a new one, but you won’t spend all your time fixing it.
We ended up getting a much more modern 2007 23′ Airstream about 3 years ago, and that required an upgrade to a truck. It’s still tiny compared to most of the campers in the campgrounds, but it’s 4800 pound weight and tongue weight require a half ton truck. I drive the truck now as my DD, and I miss my small cars, but I make the sacrifice because I love camping and I only commute 2 days a week. I dealt with it by having the MGB as a “fun car” and I take my wife’s car when it’s available for errands and such.
It may be possible to get something lighter, but it probably won’t be easier to tow because of the bigger aerodynamic profile. One thing to keep in mind is that most tow vehicles also have a maximum frontal area that they can handle in a trailer (which may not even be published for vehicles not really intended for towing), and even small SUVs with V6s rated for 3500-5000 lbs towing are often close to that limit with a hard-sided camper. Something rated for 1500 lbs likely isn’t intended for anything larger than a popup or teardrop with a minimal frontal area.
To me, if the camper’s been sitting for 10 years unused then that suggests it isn’t a priority for you and it’s probably time to let go. If you get the itch to start camping again at some point in the future you can buy a trailer and tow vehicle that are matched from the start.
Awesome tiny trailer. A decade back I idly looked around for a hard sided trailer I could tow with my 300TD. It was rated for 2000lbs, and my limited budget meant a pop-up was my only real option. This would be perfect.
A shame they couldn’t be bothered to take more interior pictures. I wonder if that was due to lack of a fisheye lens.