Making a Stealth Camper/Campercar

Tonight I’ve made my first attempt at creating a campercar. Yes yes, it doesn’t sound right, I know. But think about it. If theres only one or two of you, and you want to occassionally stay overnight for the surf, or for a photo opportunity, having a true multi-purpose car makes a lot of sense. You get all the benefits of running a lighter vehicle, easier parking than a van, easy on the wallet, low profile, cheap mpg, cheap to run, cheap toll crossings, and can wave goodbye to that rusty old camper that you ‘only ever slept in once last year’.

So what do you think? Basically, it’s my Synergie MPV, running with the seats swivelled round, and one middle row seat with the table, a Sunncamp self-inflating mattress in matching grey, Tesco grey fleece sleeping bag, gas stove with kettle, and various food stuffs hidden in the pockets at the rear of the car, like John West tuna meals, cereal bars, long life stuff. There’s two 2 litre water bottles in the sliding door pockets, and a secret wee bottle for those awkward middle of the night moments. I’ve also bought 3 large Tesco reflective sun blinds, both for privacy and for heat retention, which sucker on to the windows. But ideally I’d like to find a UK source for the base shiney material, I think it’s called reflectix, so I can make up some made to measure window blinds. One UK source is Self Build Motor Caravan Club who are advertising camper curtains and window screens for home-made campers.

Now, I just need to pluck up the courage to sleep in my car, and I can feedback whether my plan is a winner. Or not! Campercar. MPV sleeper. Stealth Camper. Gotta be a name for it.

Making a table for our MPV

Our MPV camper table turns our humble MPV into a mobile office or weekend van

Now I know you’ll be thinking ‘A table in a people carrier? You’re kidding, right?’ Well no, it’s serious, and it’s all part of my masterplan to turn our MPV into a truly multi-purpose work-rest-play vehicle.

You see I use my MPV for work during the week, where it has to double as both load carrier, mobile office and client transport (I remove 3 of the 7 seats most of the time). A table makes a lot of sense when you want to do what I do in my car! I have to work on a laptop, and I mean for up to a couple of hours, comfortably! I don’t want to sit with it low down on my lap. And its ideal when you want to have some food, and not just shove stuff in your cakehole and drive off. I mean actually brew up a cuppa, heat some soup, butter bread etc.

So I utilised a good friend during the times he wasn’t busy running his own Travel Health Consultancy and we set to measuring, cutting, planing and ordering legs for what must be one of the very few MPV folding tables in existance.

A local spraying and powder coating firm charged a small fortune spraying the MDF to match the interior, but most of the cost was absorbed by the pricey paint matching service, which cost £50 alone. Next time I’d just say ‘any colour you’ve got in stock please!’

Said friend made some brackets which are screwed into the table underneath and hook down the window channel. It’s not uber stable, but it stayed firm with my Apple Macbook Pro connected to a new 1000W inverter on top whilst I drove round the city centre for 45 minutes yesterday.

I found and bought the folding table leg from the Caravan Store Online for roughly £14.00, and it’s excellent; better than expected with a handy little catch to release the leg into it’s folded flat position. We cut it to 22″ to fit in the Synergie.

Office on wheels: MPV with new table for working away from studio