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

Where have all the MPVs gone?

I’m beginning some research, or at least planning to begin searching whether car manufacturers (globally) are producing a genuinely practical do-it-all recreational vehicle, in a similiar vein as the wonderfully thought out Synergie heralded here.

It was an article I read here on Perry’s website that got me thinking. Are today’s MPVs really worthy of the title Multiple Purpose Vehicle?
http://www.perrys.co.uk/car-news/articles/2010/04/top-ten-mpvs-1078.php

Niche markets are generally a no-go for the big car makers; we all understand that to remain profitable they must sell in volume – any quirky concepts that vary from what is percieved as a normal vehicle represent risk, and therefore remain as concepts.

Buyers looking for something a bit out of the ordinary are catered for by a small industry (in the UK at least) of custom interior and exterior Coachwork specialists, who for a price will bedeck your vehicle with an expanding roof, a hard modular floor with sliding ‘rock and roll’ bed, even a kitchen sink. They do a wonderful job, but there are negatives. The final vehicle price once converted into a camper or dayvan can soar in excess of £30,000. The vehicle height can exceed the maximum height permitted in many city car parks. The vehicles can feel ‘overburdoned’ with luxuries, many of which make the interior seem more like a prissy show home and unsuitable for the knocks and bangs of regular family use. And one of the biggest issues with interior conversions are the common loss of the ability to carry any more than 4-5 people – where’s a big cars usefulness as everyday transport if you can only ever carry 4 people?

I spent a little time browsing our local car dealers, which included some van manufacturers as well. Taking our Citroen Synergie as the benchmark, I quickly discovered how many current cars and vans are missing the basic features I now take for granted. Yes, sliding doors are firmly ‘in’ now, the public have accepted them as beneficial in tight spaces, and they’re even sprouting onto some city cars. But I couldn’t find anything with a pair of front swivel seats on a trip round Renault, Peugeot, Citroen, Ford, Nissan, or Suzuki. Volkswagen had swivel passenger front seats on their stunning show home on wheels T5 California, and some vans as well, as did Mercedes. But harder still was finding something with swivel seats, 5 removable rear seats, a 750-800 mile tank range, capable of 40-50mpg, and most importantly a flat floor.

I did find Volkswagen’s Caddy Maxi interesting, if not a little pricey on the used market. They’re still fetching upwards of £11k at present.

Essentially the kind of use where the Synergie shines is probably suitable for the majority of UK families. It’s perfect for day trips: the Synergies wide opening doors, a boot which makes a huge shaded cover and sliding doors mean it’s great for arriving somewhere and all piling out. We keep a stove in the back, along with a tiny portable loo for kids.

So to sum up, as far as I can see, the current market of MPVs (new 2010 Ford S-Max, Mazda 5 et al) and compact MPVs (Peugeot 5008, Ford C-Max) are getting generally smaller inside with narrower, lower body shapes, and despite being cleverly designed, are no longer featuring flat floors, tough surfaces, and swivel seats, but are chasing after ever-more stylish swoopy (impractical) exteriors which constrict the interior space. So buy a Synergie or 806 now, perhaps the last of the true multi purpose vehicles?