Well after years of sleeping in the car we have had made a minalmist soft floor camper for those base camping trips.
The camper ticks about half the boxes I wanted it to and has got a tick (albiet small) from my wife.
My objective was to tow something that has as little an impact as possible on where the car could go and had an internal space of >5m square so 6 people could sit comfortably.
Most important was weight so we choose an 8X4 tent on a trailer type camper which came in at about 500kg fully loaded for a weeks plus camping , about 20% of vehicle mass (so no need for brakes).
My research showed no camper this light so we modified a commercial design.
Some things we did where ->
Designed or towball load of 25kg (seriously easy to move trailer by hand)
Had basic trailer made from 1.6mm sheet (manufacturer normally uses 2.1mm ).
Used a single drawbar (not an "A" frame)
Removed spare wheel and mountings ( can use cars spare wheel if needed)
Reduced trailer tub height to 400mm
Reduced axle to 40mm square.
Used simple slipper springs, and rely on tyres as significant part of
suspension.
Tyres run at 9psi which sees a pressure rise of 2-3psi when hot.
Trailer has same track as car and uses larger load range "E" tyres (215/85/16) to lower rolling resistance.
Used ORAC coupling.
Its first trip was an easy 500km run to Exploroz Pyrennies trip 2 weeks ago
There are a few things I have learnt ,like wheel bearings were only finger tight and opening the tent into strong wind is almost not possible.
The tent door is wrong ,its hard to open and had no flyscreen.
It gets very hot inside the tent.
Despite some of the issues its looking good, some things like designing the bed height to be only 1m makes it easy to get into using a small step and no ladder, and creates a flat area you can
cook on or place things.
In bad conditions it takes about 20min to setup .
I'd be interested in any things that owners of similar campers have found useful.
One simple thing I found is that there is an internal panel you can unzip and expose the trailers wheel allowing you to throw out waste water under the trailer without leaving the tent.
Exploroz Pyrennies camp
Soft Floor Basic Camper