Campervan Conversions – A Buyers Guide

Campervan conversions are many and varied so finding the right vehicle to suit your particular style, or total lack thereof, can be a daunting task.
There is a camper van to meet the needs and wants of society’s most marginal characters offering the buyer an expanse of steel,fibreglass and furniture-board abortions with which to haemorrahage their wallet.

Planning on driving off into Europe with the family for a long time?
Golly Gosh – what to spunk my money on ?
Save yourself a load of time I’ve done the research for you. These are the 5 main types of aftermarket campervan conversions you can purchase “off the peg” if you’re throbbing little heart desires.

A massively overpriced  1960’s VW Splitscreen Campervan

Like the vans themselves the splitscreen camper is best suited to high maintenance and largely unserviceable persons.
Misty eyed owners can be heard to regale anyone within earshot about their “labour of love” .

A responsibility not unlike caring for a senile labrador who stubbornly refuses to die.
You can take it out once a month when it’s not raining, people will stroke it but the best you can hope for is that it doesn’t shit itself .

Death is on the hardshoulder sharpening his sythe but why not just prolong the agony and keep chucking money at the problem?
Yours for £35,000.

The Talbot Express Autosleeper Van

Available in either Silly Putty or Stained Tupperware colourschemes. £15, 000 to you, you mug.
It’s got tassled curtains made from the covers of  a previous owners sofa and cushions fashioned from the carpet of an Avocado Toilet Suite . The Talbot is the motorhome of choice for the divorced retiree with a penchant for socks, sandals and underspecified nylon shorts.

A Fiat Ducato Motorhome

Complete with an overcab sleeping compartment that looks like Ant Mcpartlin’s forehead.
The campervan best suited to  bloated, pensionable couples with at least 3 Golden Retrievers.
A Fiat Ducato will probably have around 300,000 miles on the clock but that’s only because the engine is doing it’s best to get away from the  nearly-deads driving.

Oh god. A Fucking Race Van

Oh look, There it is.  The £58,000 “Race Van” conversion.  A butchered Sprinter best piloted by casual racists from the Midlands with a penchant for blue LED’s and flat screen tellys.

The excruciating price is matched by it’s formidable specification.

That spec for you

• Living space uniformly plastered in grey carpet
• Kitchen unit shoe-horned into the sliding door entrance
• Massive, checkerplate box for storage of scramblers, kite surfing gear, wrap around shades
• Modelled on the aesthetics of a Baskteball boot

Custom decals to match the owner tattoos are available.

 

The Volkswagen T5 Campervan Conversion

Cooking bacon in a T5 campervan will degrade the value by around 17% so the T5 hob and grill   are purely for decorative purposes. If you’re keen to wrestle into a frigid wetsuit in a windswept car park this vehicle could well be for you as the internal dimensions prevent all but the sturdiest of midgets from changing within it’s confines.

Both kidneys and it’s yours. If you’d like to be able to stand up inside  that’ll cost you both legs.

To Summarise

That rose-tinted view of parking up on a sun kissed Cornish beach with glass peeling across the horizon doesn’t actually exist. What you need to prepare for is unrelenting south westerly gales and sideways rain while stuck in a van with people who, by this point, want to smash each others faces into the dashboard and check into a hotel.

No aftermarket conversions can, realistically, service my requirements.

So I’m going to build my own van.

And that’s what this blog is about.