Richard, I'm thinnking about the same issues. I'll let you in on my thinking and see if we are along the same track.

The key understanding is knowing what sort of camoing you are wanting to do. If you want the thrill of burning up sand dunes or doing serious off roading then you're going to need a small 4x4 with a high power to weight ratio.

If you after somthing to do a longer expedition type travelling the you're probably after sleeping and storage space and lets be honist you're not going to do hard off-roading because you then have potential to damage the vehicle and with it possibly your suvival - this is the serious stuff.

I've been looking at these bigger vehicles, Unimog, MJ, Leyland DAF 45, MAN 8.136 and DAF YA???, KAT1, etc. In relation to the small 4x4s these will all be underpowered but yiu get space. Key issues are GVW, Licence, fuel economy and road speed.

My thinking is that we all have about 0.5 - 1ton kit for a expedition, with a Landrover your right on the weight limit, with a truck there is a larger margin for reliability. I want space and I've seen MJs and Leylands with intergral PTO recovery winches which is probably a must have.

I'm looking for a MJ or Daf with one of the MOD signal Boxes to fitt onto the back and then to convert this to a camper. If not, you're the cost of a bodie builder fabing you something up.

Good MJ £4000 10-30KKm, good Landrover £6-7000 but with high miles. You can do a lot of miles for £3K!

Let me know you thoughts