The Cosalt Take over of Safari Caravans Ltd.

[Brian M]

I have had a couple of questions about other caravans carrying the Safari name and thought I should clarify. "Our" classic Safaris were made from 1948-1978 by a company firstly called Pearman Briggs Ltd and then Safari Caravans Ltd based in Stroud in Gloucestershire.

In 1968 the Company was sold to The Cosalt Group based in Hull who also owned several other caravan marques - Welton, Piper, and Abbey, Bessacar, ACE and Sprite. The latter bought from Sam Alper's Caravans International Group.

The Safari factory was left to continue building "our" Safaris until 1982, when Cosalt closed down the whole operation.

The Pearman Briggs name carries on to this day as a modern caravan dealer.

They only changed the front badge to read Cosalt Safari. Because the Safari name was by far the most prestigious brand they owned it was applied to various models made under the other brand names, and many of these had the Cosalt Safari badge stuck on the front. But their construction and fitments was to the standard of the original marque and not up to the superior specifications of a true Safari.

[Brian M]

Most of the above came from Wikipedia but a classic caravan expert on fb has criticised it as being totally wrong - his reply is repeated below

"Cosalt Caravans never owned Ace or Sprite - Ace Caravans merged with Belmont Caravans (who made statics) in 1971 to form ABI (Ace Belmont International) who lasted until 2002 when they stopped producing touring caravans, but they still manufacture statics under the ABI name. They were Cosalts' main competitor throughout the late 1970's and 1980's. The Swift group later bought the rights to the Ace name and the model names and restarted production in 2003. Sprite on the other hand went into receivership in 1981 and in 1982 the financial advisors restarted the company as Sprite Caravans and dissolved Caravans International, selling off every Ci name apart from Sprite and Eccles. In 1992 they hit trouble again and this time were bought by the emerging Swift Group, who renamed the company Sprite Leisure and carried on production at the original Sprite factory in Newmarket, before shutting the factory down and moving production to Hull and dropping the Sprite name to become Europa. Also in 1993, Swift bought Abbey and the rights to the Piper name from Cosalt - the reason why Cosalt sold Abbey is unclear though. Pearman Briggs Caravans (dealership) offered a dealer special named the Safari based on the Swift Group's Abbey until 2008 when Swift stopped producing Abbey and Ace caravans. To this day Cosalt are still in business making static caravans, but have long since stopped producing touring caravans. Cosalt never owned Bessacarr either, they were an independent manufacturer from 1964 until 1995 when they hit financial trouble, and the Swift Group again swooped in and bought them, continuing production but quality suffered. In 2008, Swift dropped the Bessacarr brand, but it then became a dealer special offered by Couplands Caravans, based on the Swift Conqueror range.
about an hour ago"

The dangers of quoting internet information