Type 2 or modern camper?
Discussion
I just thought that I would share my experiences of a weekend with a classic Type 2 camper with you. I've always liked these but thought that they were probably a bit overrated and I haven't been brave enough to take the plunge and buy one myself!
We hired a fully restored 1978 bay window from Comfy Campers in Cheltenham (highly recommended) and spent a long weekend touring Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. The camper had a new 1600cc air-cooled engine fitted and had also been fully refurbished inside and out. Firstly the negatives.
It's very slow and noisy (takes a long time to get up to speed and definitely doesn't like hills, so not a relaxing vehicle to drive when you have a time deadline to meet!)
The gearbox is only a four-speeder and very slow and ponderous (you need to plan ahead and decide whether to stay in a higher gear and keep your foot in or change down and potentially lose a lot of momentum in the process!)
You have to trust that the brakes are actually slowing you down, as there is little feel.
It's not really possible to release the handbrake while its in first gear so you have to hold it on the foot brake and jump quickly to the accelerator and try to avoid rolling back.
The floor hinged pedals take some getting used to.
No choke and twin carbs so a bit grumpy from a cold start.
Not completely airtight so a bit draughty on the move and no heater to speak of.
However, accepting that the vehicle was over 30 years old, after a day of getting used to it, I really started to get into a rhthym and enjoy driving it. The steering was not as heavy as expected (you don't have the weight of the engine over the front wheels) and it rode and handled surprisingly well. Not as much body roll as I expected and you could hustle it through the bends surprisingly quickly. People cut me up coming out of junctions as they probably assumed that I would hold them up but with a bit of forward planning, it would happily cruise at 60mph and keep pace with the traffic flow provided that the road was flat! Planning my entry speed into corners and roundabouts to maintain momentum and avoid stopping where possible became massively rewarding (as well as nailing the perfect gearchange). These are the kind of things that I don't really have to think about normally in my car! Threading it through sleepy Devon villages early on Sunday morning on the way to the beach with the exhaust popping and banging on the overrun will remain with me as one of my most enjoyable driving experiences ever. On Monday morning I needed to get it back to Cheltenham from Bude by 11am. This concerned me as I only had 3.5 hours to do it but I made it, 160 miles including two fuel stops and a toilet stop. I know that I would have made this comfortably in my Impreza but would I really have done it much quicker legally? As the icing on the cake, it didn't miss a beat in four days of hard use or use any oil (I'm used to seeing broken down VW campers on the hard shoulder of the M5), whereas I saw several sticken (new) Audi and Mercedes by the side of the road over the course of the weekend!
In summary, I enjoyed driving it much more than I expected to and found it more rewarding than a modern car as it required me to drive it properly (I'm sure that 90% of drivers could jump in my Impreza and access most of its performance). I also enjoyed the overall camper van experience. They are a bit cramped with the bed folded down but you can go anywhere that you would go in a car and park in normal car parks and normal-sized parking spaces. Would I like one? Yes, but could I justify it, probably not. At the end of the day, it's an expensive toy and would be too thirsty and potentially unreliable to run on a daily basis. It's also a bit too big to park on a daily basis and would soon be ruined if used in all weather conditions. If I had a camper van, I would also like to take it over to the continent and although this one was reliable, I would be concerned about breaking down abroad.
However, although I'm sure the vast majority of modern camper vans are more comfortable, more reliable, more economical and quicker, they're just not as cool. The T2 got a positive response from people everywhere we went. That may not seem important but no-one needs a camper van and they are an aspirational thing. The modern T5 based camper vans are probably as cool and as close to the T2s as you can get in terms of compact dimensions and useability but are rather expensive (£40k ish) and a pretty unimaginative way of spending £40k. Plus they are not unique (they all seem to be white, black, grey or silver). The larger camper vans are doubtless more habitable with permanent beds (the rock and roll bed in the T2 was only three quarter width and my feet went off the end and I'm only 5 foot 9) and lose that go anywhere ability. My uncle has some type of large Peugeot diesel camper van and just goes to one site and parks it up for a week (I don't see the point of having a camper van over a caravan in that scenario)! I realise that you can get a new T2 with a modern water-cooled Polo engine which would seem the ideal combination of cool looks and modern reliability but somehow doesn't quite seem like the authentic camper van experience (letting it warm up for 5 minutes before setting off is all part of the experience)!
So would you have a camper van and would you go for classic or modern?
I'm thinking of an unholy alliance between a classic T2 and the engine out of my Imprexa turbo or maybe a classic Beetle, Mini Cooper or 205 GTi is easier to justify as a DD?
We hired a fully restored 1978 bay window from Comfy Campers in Cheltenham (highly recommended) and spent a long weekend touring Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. The camper had a new 1600cc air-cooled engine fitted and had also been fully refurbished inside and out. Firstly the negatives.
It's very slow and noisy (takes a long time to get up to speed and definitely doesn't like hills, so not a relaxing vehicle to drive when you have a time deadline to meet!)
The gearbox is only a four-speeder and very slow and ponderous (you need to plan ahead and decide whether to stay in a higher gear and keep your foot in or change down and potentially lose a lot of momentum in the process!)
You have to trust that the brakes are actually slowing you down, as there is little feel.
It's not really possible to release the handbrake while its in first gear so you have to hold it on the foot brake and jump quickly to the accelerator and try to avoid rolling back.
The floor hinged pedals take some getting used to.
No choke and twin carbs so a bit grumpy from a cold start.
Not completely airtight so a bit draughty on the move and no heater to speak of.
However, accepting that the vehicle was over 30 years old, after a day of getting used to it, I really started to get into a rhthym and enjoy driving it. The steering was not as heavy as expected (you don't have the weight of the engine over the front wheels) and it rode and handled surprisingly well. Not as much body roll as I expected and you could hustle it through the bends surprisingly quickly. People cut me up coming out of junctions as they probably assumed that I would hold them up but with a bit of forward planning, it would happily cruise at 60mph and keep pace with the traffic flow provided that the road was flat! Planning my entry speed into corners and roundabouts to maintain momentum and avoid stopping where possible became massively rewarding (as well as nailing the perfect gearchange). These are the kind of things that I don't really have to think about normally in my car! Threading it through sleepy Devon villages early on Sunday morning on the way to the beach with the exhaust popping and banging on the overrun will remain with me as one of my most enjoyable driving experiences ever. On Monday morning I needed to get it back to Cheltenham from Bude by 11am. This concerned me as I only had 3.5 hours to do it but I made it, 160 miles including two fuel stops and a toilet stop. I know that I would have made this comfortably in my Impreza but would I really have done it much quicker legally? As the icing on the cake, it didn't miss a beat in four days of hard use or use any oil (I'm used to seeing broken down VW campers on the hard shoulder of the M5), whereas I saw several sticken (new) Audi and Mercedes by the side of the road over the course of the weekend!
In summary, I enjoyed driving it much more than I expected to and found it more rewarding than a modern car as it required me to drive it properly (I'm sure that 90% of drivers could jump in my Impreza and access most of its performance). I also enjoyed the overall camper van experience. They are a bit cramped with the bed folded down but you can go anywhere that you would go in a car and park in normal car parks and normal-sized parking spaces. Would I like one? Yes, but could I justify it, probably not. At the end of the day, it's an expensive toy and would be too thirsty and potentially unreliable to run on a daily basis. It's also a bit too big to park on a daily basis and would soon be ruined if used in all weather conditions. If I had a camper van, I would also like to take it over to the continent and although this one was reliable, I would be concerned about breaking down abroad.
However, although I'm sure the vast majority of modern camper vans are more comfortable, more reliable, more economical and quicker, they're just not as cool. The T2 got a positive response from people everywhere we went. That may not seem important but no-one needs a camper van and they are an aspirational thing. The modern T5 based camper vans are probably as cool and as close to the T2s as you can get in terms of compact dimensions and useability but are rather expensive (£40k ish) and a pretty unimaginative way of spending £40k. Plus they are not unique (they all seem to be white, black, grey or silver). The larger camper vans are doubtless more habitable with permanent beds (the rock and roll bed in the T2 was only three quarter width and my feet went off the end and I'm only 5 foot 9) and lose that go anywhere ability. My uncle has some type of large Peugeot diesel camper van and just goes to one site and parks it up for a week (I don't see the point of having a camper van over a caravan in that scenario)! I realise that you can get a new T2 with a modern water-cooled Polo engine which would seem the ideal combination of cool looks and modern reliability but somehow doesn't quite seem like the authentic camper van experience (letting it warm up for 5 minutes before setting off is all part of the experience)!
So would you have a camper van and would you go for classic or modern?
I'm thinking of an unholy alliance between a classic T2 and the engine out of my Imprexa turbo or maybe a classic Beetle, Mini Cooper or 205 GTi is easier to justify as a DD?
GreatGranny said:
Modern for me.
I don't particular like pottering along at 50mph being hassled by HGVs just so I can look "cool".
Fair enough! I wasn't too bothered about speed to be honest, I was on holiday and avoided motorways wherever possible! It was quite refreshing to not have to worry about whether I was breaking the speed limit TBH and as I said in my OP, it was more fun to drive than I could ever have imagined. I thought it looked cool and I don't really care what other people think but all the same its nice to get a positive reaction even if you can't take credit for it! I don't particular like pottering along at 50mph being hassled by HGVs just so I can look "cool".
Jamie Oliver did something like that!white_goodman said:
Fair enough! I wasn't too bothered about speed to be honest, I was on holiday and avoided motorways wherever possible! It was quite refreshing to not have to worry about whether I was breaking the speed limit TBH and as I said in my OP, it was more fun to drive than I could ever have imagined. I thought it looked cool and I don't really care what other people think but all the same its nice to get a positive reaction even if you can't take credit for it!
If you want to look 'cool' and pat yourself on the back for being some sort of imagined driving expert/petrolhead for putting up with rubbish driving characteristics then go for the old one.If you'd rather have comfort and an all around better vehicle (for driving and camping) then go for the new one.
Judging by your posts on the matter, sounds like it's the former case. Good luck.
white_goodman said:
No choke and twin carbs so a bit grumpy from a cold start.
It's an auto choke IIRC, so a single full push of the throttle sets you up to start it.I've owned a couple of T2s (Because the first burst into flames in Chiswick
) and a T4 Syncro and the difference is huge. The modern ones are vastly better as 50mph soon becomes pretty tedious. If you want something different it's easy to convert a modern van yourself. My T4 was a baby blue ex-Transco van, with a huge full width bed and poptop, fridge etc.
We've spent some time in both the new transporter when doing our track days at knockhill and a 15 window camper split screen on hols with friends. I loved driving the split screen, the brakes were poop and it couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding but it was an absolute hoot to drive and smiles all the time. A great place to be.
If you can afford to get one with a bit more poke and better brakes then I'd go for it. The running costs will be high but may out weigh the equivalent depreciation of a new van. Saying that the new transporters are very cool. Especially the long wheelbase versions which are highly in demand. You can kit them out pretty much how you like.
Garlick said:
Wow, very cool!Modern for me every single time:
- speed/economy/comfort for driving
- totally destroys the older ones for actual camper usability
- LWB option adds even more interior space
- yet to be defeated by any narrow road that bigger campers couldn't access!
- safety: having seen the results of a crashed T2, I'd have a T5 every time
- still "cool" IMO
I like the appearance of old ones but that's the only aspect I like. Head > heart for me...
And I agree with comment above about the "new" old ones just not looking right, and they're damn expensive at the same time. I don't mind admitting our T5 conversion cost ~£25k all-in (£8k van, £17k conversion plus modifications...).
- speed/economy/comfort for driving
- totally destroys the older ones for actual camper usability
- LWB option adds even more interior space
- yet to be defeated by any narrow road that bigger campers couldn't access!
- safety: having seen the results of a crashed T2, I'd have a T5 every time
- still "cool" IMO
I like the appearance of old ones but that's the only aspect I like. Head > heart for me...
And I agree with comment above about the "new" old ones just not looking right, and they're damn expensive at the same time. I don't mind admitting our T5 conversion cost ~£25k all-in (£8k van, £17k conversion plus modifications...).
Captain Muppet said:
So in terms of cost per night how does running a camper van compare to, say, a nice B&B?
I'd much rather wake in a nice camper, cook some bacon, stroll in the country and enjoy the feeling that you are out there over waking up in a B&B. Really I would. Horses for courses I guess.
Garlick said:
Captain Muppet said:
So in terms of cost per night how does running a camper van compare to, say, a nice B&B?
I'd much rather wake in a nice camper, cook some bacon, stroll in the country and enjoy the feeling that you are out there over waking up in a B&B. Really I would. Horses for courses I guess.
Lifestyle choice. Some of my soft mates don't understand our choice, but I'm just not a hotel/B&B guy. Even trips away in the car I prefer camping despite the issues the limited luggage space creates.
At a rough tally, we spent in excess of 50 nights in our campervan last year alone - split approx 50/50 campsites/camping rough. Fair enough we'd not have spent 50+ nights away in hotels if we didn't have the campervan, but having it opens up more possibilities for cheeky weekends away.
I popped into VW Commercial the other day and they had a Blue Camper van in there. I nearly fell over when I saw it was £54k.
£54K!!!!!
For a Van. A Van with a tent on the roof. £54k.
Lunacy.
The same money gets you a proper one:
http://www.marquismotorhomes.co.uk/used-Motorhomes...
£54K!!!!!
For a Van. A Van with a tent on the roof. £54k.
Lunacy.
The same money gets you a proper one:
http://www.marquismotorhomes.co.uk/used-Motorhomes...
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