History About Rooftop Tent

Before the invention of rooftop tent, many attempts have been made to utilize the top of cars for sleeping purposes but end with unsuitable and uncomfortable experience, cause the uneven and non-resilient surface, the central top area is too weak to take the weights, roof tents are meant to solve this problem.

Speaking about rooftop tent, according to Wikipedia, says roof tent is an accessory which may be fitted to the roof or bed of a motor vehicles which allows the users to sleep in relative safety and comfort above the vehicle, and leaves the internal load-space free. The first example of roof-tents appeared in Western Europe in the 1930s, what’s more, Autohome claims that they are the first official rooftop tent company on the market who have the patent.

A picture of RTT far from recent concept.

The picture above is selected from Donald Wood’s “RVs & Campers, 1900-2000, An Illustrated History,” and came across the above RTT mounted to a Fiat Topolino. The Topo-tent appeared in the January 1937 issue of Popular Science, though neither the magazine nor Wood provided any definitive information about the RTT or its maker.

If you are an overlander for years, you might know the brand called Autohome. An Italian brand who claimed they found the first rooftop tent brand in the whole world.

According to Autohome website, we can approach the detail article that wrote about” The World’s First-dating back to 1958”, it says two types (“Maggiolina” and “Air Camping”) of tents are an historical synonym for roof tents. Two of them were created by different creators: Stogl and Gidion. Back then, the origin name of Maggiolina is called Autocampeggio Stogl, from the name of its creator, the models of the rooftop tent remain almost unchanged over 50 years of production.

Since then, roof tents have spread to all continents and been popular in outdoor and expedition circles, especially on large cars such as jeeps and Land Rovers in Australia, Africa and rooftop tent becomes a hot trend ever since, started from Western Europe to rest of the world, under Italian license, those countries including: Brazil, France, Germany, USA and UK.

Let’s take a look about those origin rooftop tents made by Autohome.

(Maggiolina roof tent on the roof of Fiat 1500 sedan (late Sixties)

But at the same time, if you google” rooftop tent history”, not very much message you could use beside the Autohome article we’ve mentioned above. So, I found an article about this, “the circa 1963 Corvair Greenbrier that appeared in our first look at factory-offered in-car sleeping arrangements, seemed pretty early. Part of a camping accessory group that Chevrolet offered, the Top Sleeper Unit appears to be a simple canvas-sided pop-up mounted to the Greenbrier’s roof with suction-cup mounts. Chevrolet described it as a “durable waterproof unit that will accommodate a 3/4 size mattress” that comes with a two-piece ladder. But two companies’ claims to RTT precedence pre-date the air-cooled Chevrolet entirely. According to Italian RTT maker Air-Camping, inventor Giuseppe Dionisio patented his RTT in 1959 (to date, we’ve only found a French and an Australian patent for his RTT, both filed for in March 1962).”

Anyway, the correct time when rooftop tent been invented just like a blur in the mist. But the true fact we stand is roof tent is a great invention for nature lovers and overlanders.

As we already knew, the Italian rooftop tent manufacturer Zifer, who distributes Autohome, claims on its website its first RTTs were patented between 1957 and 1958. The late Fifties appeared to be a boom time for RTTs.

The history of rooftop tent keep goes on around Europe and other continents, manufacturers like James Baroud，South Africa Front Runner and Alu-cab, they see the potential of rooftop tent market. Front Runner, South Africa rooftop tent brand who founded in 1980s. Another well-known brand like South Africa rooftop tent brand named Alu-cab opened its doors in 2000 as a small canopy manufacturing business. It focused on custom built aluminum canopies for the off-road market. By expanding into new product like rooftop tent to go deep in the outdoor field.

Admittedly, Australia——A country which have plenty 4WD fans, a country with vast territory with a spare population. ARB came out quick as a 4×4 accessories. The origins of ARB go back to 1975, and they reached out for factories in China, that explains why Australia show up when mention about history of the RTT, cause the mount of overlanders is huge.

Some companies do their overland business smart and efficient just by acquired rooftop tent brand, here we introduced the company Thule, in 2018 they acquired Tepui as their owned, back then, Tepui already gain a lot of fames. As we all know, Thule make the best roof rack, they design the foothill roof tent which just half size of regular RTT, it remains space for overlander who would like to carry bike to go camping. The design is different from other tents on the market, which means roof tent type is developing from the user’s perspective.

The same year 2008，rooftop tent finally hit the door of China, the soft shell tent pop the market and all the overlanders and manufacturers in China began to develop, most of them provide OEM for big brands. They came up with new RTT models and high degree of scale for Chinese manufacturers meet the needs of our customers. Some of the brands use similar design using fiberglass as tent shell (Autohome), some use aluminum, tough and-long lasting, it really depends. And Wild Land who founded in 2002, become famous all over the world, in 2014 they start selling the wireless remote rooftop tent which start inventing in 2007, and grow huge fame since 2008. As the Chinese biggest RTT manufacturer, with unique patent designs successfully captured the hearts of the public.

Speaking of the model, a Korean brand iKamper has great prestige. This brand did not start with imitation but with extraordinary models，that might be the key reason why this brand get so popular.

Nowadays, rooftop tents are getting more and more popular on the market, traveling with car, tent, portable fridge and so much more outdoor gears show up, we define an RTT as a separate tent attached to a vehicle’s roof, there’s more, not just a vehicle gear or a camping style, what we truly meant is a whole new life style, to go out, sleep on top of the car, to watch the sunrise and sunset, to enjoy what mother nature provides to this planet.

To stand rain and sand out there, manufacturers make a ton of improvements for the structure, fabric of the tent and also the plate. Here we mention about Autohome, they use carbon fiber to make the tent more sturdy, some use aluminum alloy or ABS with , another part is material, it can be polyester mix cotton / 100% cotton/acrylic fibers，countless knowledges inside of it, models of them did not change much, but with small changes to keep themselves different from other brands.

With rooftop developing, kinds of roof tents are being made, like Roofnest Falcon, Thule foothill, Tuff stuff Alpha, CVT Denali Pioneer Extended, with extraordinary figures, durable, sturdy structure. In recent days, Roofnest, Tentbox, James Baroud, Alu-cab are the top brands, with mounts of start-up brands, hard to picture the exact future of it.

Let’s take a fair guess, in the future, I wonder, is there a chance that more and more companies will be acquire by big groups, just like Tepui got acquired by Thule in 2018, Front runner acquired by Dometic, and also TWG acquired Tuff stuff, no hard to tell that the rooftop tent field is facing the bright future just by simply see the big groups are going down for this game. Cause now there are many brands in the market that used to do auto parts are developing product lines and moving to outdoor products like rooftop tent. Will rooftop tent market develop the entire franchise formula?

Rooftop tent——comfortable, easy to find a campsite, faster and easier to set up than ground tent, warmer and better insulated, it provides you a clean, safe space to enjoy your trip, with a simple introduction of the RTT history, get to know more about rooftop tent.