Bedford Rascal, Daihatsu Hi-Jet, Piaggio Porter - what thoughts?
 

A mate of mine's just bought himself a Bedford Bambi which is a tiny little camper on the old Bedford Rascal chassis cab. It got me looking for something similar and then I stumbled across the Piaggio Porter

€6400
 

looks good but cant find one for €6400.

where did you see that then?

Graeme

Err, in the Piaggio dealership in Rennes, should explain that price is for the chassis cab, not for the little minibus in the piccie, and now I think of it I'll have to see if that included taxes, which thinking about it as a commercial vehicle it might not have.

Anyway still quite cheap although fitting a camperback would obviously add cost.

Can't ring today it's labour day.

Alex if you turn up at Le Mans in one of these i promise you i will take my Mahindra!!:D

A quick photoshop later and voila

max capacity
 

A mate of mine had the Bambi camper many years ago.
You can get a lot of big guys inside one of them, at a standstill, but it really does rock side to side.
(It was the same type of competition as trying to get the max number of people into a phone box).

I take it all back!! thats fantastic!:thumbup1:

Well went to the dealer's today and sure enough my price was without VAT... Ah well.

Also they won't sell the chassis-cab on its own, it has to be either fitted with something or going to a recognised fitter, which is a bit of a pain, so I'm going to see if I can find a local campervan builder, I'm sure I saw one, and see what kind of a quote they could give.

In my youth I drove a Bedford Rascal (firms van) as my only transport for 2 years. It really is a great bit of kit. The engine is a lovely, revvy little beasty and the gearbox was slick. As you can imagine a 26 year old could make that van fly. I once had it off the clock at 85+ on the M6, down hill. I treated it like I stole it and it never complained once. When I drove my van empty I could get the rear wheels to come off the ground when braking hard! One of my main concerns was always the proximity of your feet to the front of the van. I would not have wanted to have a crash in one. But that asside I'd say they're a tough little van, bullet proof.

Got a bit further
 

I spoke to a place that has in the past made campervan bodies today (they usually make boats) and they would do me a simple aluminium framed and composite aluminium/foam sandwich panelled box like my photoshop starting from about €800 - more if I wanted anything fancy like a pop top. They'd also buy the chassis cab for me ex-VAT and then I'd pay them inc-VAT (well OK they'd take a huge deposit up front).

I'm very tempted to go further with this, as they also seemed really enthusiastic about the idea, who knows perhaps it could be a small series?

So, next question.

Alex do you know what kind of fuel economy it'll do. Unsuprisingly I never checked my company van! I was wondering as once all that bodywork is fitted etc it's going to weigh a bit for a 1000cc engine.

Well they've advanced a bit and now come with 1.3 petrol or 1.4 diesel engines, so shouldn't be too bad, especially the diesel.

A 1.4 diesel would be just the job a lot more torque, which is what you want. My experience was 20 years ago! doesn't time fly. My bike at the time had a bigger engine than that van, I had an FJ1200!

Was chatting with a met of mine who years back had a Unimog camper, and we came up with a couple of ideas to work on.

The basic would be to have some form of "pop-top roof top" tent. The idea would be that like a roof top tent it flipped up and over unolfding to twice the size of the roof top. The difference would be built in and that it'd be accessed from the inside of the 'van, giving effectively a two storey camper. Accessing from the inside would be good for bad weather/security, but it'd mean that downstairs only had to serve as sitting/cooking space and would have full standing head room. Obviously an awning could be dropped from the flipped open top to give a covered "conservatory" section giving even more living space.

So the thought to ponder where, should it flip open front to back or side to side?

Heres a 2 story camper:

PROFILE

looks a tad complicated though.....:clap: