In support of the Mini Clamshell RTT

Any rooftop tent (RTT) review must begin with an explanation of the advantages of the concept. To the uninitiated, spending thousands of dollars on a multi-hundred-pound barnacle that sits as high as possible on your vehicle’s center of gravity sounds insane. After a month of setting up and breaking down a backpacking tent daily, with widely varying quality of sleep in between, not buying a RTT is what seemed insane to me.

The RTT concept emerges, like so much of off-road canon, from the overland headwaters of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In that culture of harsh vehicle-based nomadism, sleeping in consistent conditions (farther from the small and large things that tend to kill humans down there) fundamentally enabled their lifestyle. Long before RTTs became an impotent fashion statement on mall-crawling Tacomas, they were a literal home for pioneering explorers who broke ground on the trails we enjoy today.

RTTs take several forms, and some of them are worth throwing in the trash immediately. Any tent with an external cover (zip-on, velcro, or strapped down) fails the first test of RTT worthiness: ease of setup and breakdown. If your tent requires matching a zipper up and walking it around the entire vehicle, trust me that you will grow to hate it quickly. And as Yoda so wisely opined, hate leads to the dark side … not using your tent, not viewing your vehicle as the simple route to adventure you envisaged, spending weekends on your couch, and dying young and alone of malignant unfuckable obesity.

Yes, they’re cheap - especially when the Bronco they’re on is CGI. But don’t be tempted. Zipping the cover back on a softshell RTT is a special brand of torture.

Ah yes, the softshell RTT awning. This is … pure madness. Installation is finnicky at best with zippers rarely lining up and binding constantly when they do. Then, once it’s up, you are anchored in place. Sure, it looks like a ton of usable room for you and a large group. In reality it will sit in its canvas bag in your garage for eternity.

The two forms of RTT worth considering are pure clamshells and hybrid clamshells. Pure clamshells are exactly what they sound like - a hard shell that lifts up on gas struts to reveal a simple bed. Hybrid clamshells also have a lifting hard shell, but it’s half-sized and reveals a second hard platform that flips out with the aid of a ladder to double the size of the sleeping area. These hybrids can either be smaller than a pure clamshell or the same size but with roughly double the sleeping area for large groups (popular in certain parts of Southern Utah).

AluCab makes a distinctly durable and liveable pure clamshell. You’ll have to pay for it.

It’s unclear whether M.I.A, the company that made my “Overlander Mini" RTT, still exists. It’s also irrelevant, since the same handful of incestuous factories in China make 3 basic tents that are tweaked in minor ways and marketed for shockingly diverse MSRPs by hundreds of companies of vastly varying repute. Companies with established brands like Roofnest and iKamper charge $3400 and $3700 for their Condor and SkyCamp Mini models. I spent 2k on my Overlander Mini, and you can still buy the functionally identical Tuff Stuff Alpha 2 for $2700. You are welcome to buy whatever you like, based on soft factors like resale value, support (lol), or confidence in the thing not disintegrating. None of that will change the immutable fact that your tent shares 99% of its DNA with one that costs a full grand less. And unless you live in a major city, are you really going to go through the shipping nightmare required to get service on your hard-mounted leviathan?

So what’s life like with a hybrid clamshell? In short, better than a ground tent and worse than a variety options from high-end pure clamshells (AluCab, GFC, James Baroud) to wedge campers (AT Overland, Super Pacific, GFC again) and even some static toppers. What you get is a mattress you’ll want to replace if you sleep anywhere other than flat on your back, a waterproof environs that’s reasonably quiet as long as the winds stay under 20 knots (above that it won’t collapse but it will sound like your bookie at the front door), and most crucially a setup and breakdown that are legitimately, repeatably, magnificently, under 2 minutes flat. If this doesn’t sound life changing to you, I can only surmise that you enjoy making your bed after driving 15 hours, day after day, and making the house that your bed goes in after driving 15 hours, day after day. You masochist.

I like my little mini hybrid clamshell. It fits me and a lady companion with room to spare, and hasn’t failed in 100 nights or so over 3 years. It didn’t rattle apart like my suspension did on a speedrun across the Mojave Rd, and I’ve never felt annoyed setting it up or breaking it down - even when the Wyoming temps dropped. There’s a crack in the corner of the plastic shell where I set it down on the garage floor last winter, but it doesn’t affect function and is a “me” problem anyway. We’ve had condensation-induced stalactites on the ceiling in a below-freezing jaunt to the Uintas, but that’s tent stuff. This thing is still a tent. It does tent things, the good ones and the bad ones.

Deploying the hybrid clamshell is as simple as advertised. Undo 3 latches, push up the strut-assisted main clamshell, grab the ladder to deploy the folding sleep platform, and you’re ready to sleep. Moderate bedding fits within, though it won’t always look hotel perfect when you make camp. Because half of its been upside down.

If you’d like some ambiance, you can insert 2 pegs in each of the 3 windows to create rainproof ambiance. It’s a bit fiddly, but only adds a minute or so to setup and teardown.

If you’re driving a car/SUV, the decision might be made for you. Your crossbar real estate might limit you to a hybrid clamshell, and that’s no poor option. Mine fit my JKU like a glove and graduated onto the Ram out of convenience following that Jeep’s untimely passing. If you do have enough rooftop real estate for a pure clamshell, you have a decision to make. Is it worth doubling your spend to get an instant setup and perfectly made bed? Possibly. It can’t be overstated how fast and easy crashing out is with a pure clamshell. You flip 2 latches, push up with the aid of some eager gas struts, and your bed is precisely as you left it when you hobbled out in the morning. That being said, 5 grand is 5 grand. And there are other options lurking nearby.

If you have a truck bed to play with, your options expand dramatically - so long as your budget does in kind. Ignoring slide-in campers, there are traditional fiberglass camper shells in various heights, the same in aluminum, and pop-up options in wedge and full roof shapes. Given that they start at 7k, serious consideration must be given to the pop-tops. If you’re thinking about putting a RTT on your truck bed, you’ll have to buy towers, crossmembers and waterproof storage solutions for your woefully unprotected bed. You still won’t be able to stand up in privacy and change like you could with a pop-top, and you’ll have essentially zero weatherproof non-sleep living space. It’s easy enough to say you just won’t camp when the sun ain’t shining, but the reality of life on the road is that you’ll need to spend time in shelter more often than you’d ideally like.

Kitting out a pop-top camper with cool tools like these from GP Factor is fun … but also expensive and irresistable, so beware the first push on the snowball.

Long bed, small bed.

Here’s the issue. Once you start talking about pop-tops, you start talking about building them out. And bolting shit like solar panels and fans to them. That’s well and good, but often ends up in a $40k rabbit hole. Buying used is a crapshoot given the variations in bed size and difficulty of transport. If you just bought $400 bed rails, $200 worth of Home Depot boxes, and a $1900 used hybrid clamshell tent, you’d find 90% of your recreational outdoor needs catered to. You’d also feel like you were camping, which is at least part of the point - not bringing your house with you (I see you, slide-ins). For me, the delta from ground tent to hybrid clamshell RTT was immense. The diminishing returns are severe, and I don’t foresee an equivalent delta going to a pure clamshell or pop-top. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, but it does mean you should go in eyes-open and have a heart to heart with yourself on what you truly want and need.

When the headlights come on, it’s nice to roll into camp and throw the RTT latches.