Home-built camper turns heads

Spend any time on the road and you’ll see plenty of budget camper vans. A more accurate name might be ’sleeper’ vans as they’re often little more than a van with the seats removed and a bed installed in their place.

These ’sleeper’ vans are usually filled with friendly young foreigners and are easily spotted due to their hallmark custom paint - slapped on with pressure packs to take your attention away from the scrapes and dings. 

A rarer sight to these bogan-slogan vans is the high-end camper van.  So svelte, so utterly gorgeous that should you see one, you just have to stop and admire it.

Such was the case when I discovered Leith and Jan’s stealth camper van on the street recently.  

I don’t even think I would have noticed the unassuming Volkswagen van if I had not parked directly behind it. A discrete Fiamma awning piqued my interest and while there was no sign of a pop-top (nor slapped on slogans), this van was clearly more than just a humble VW Transporter.

Subtle cues included the edge of two discrete solar panels peeping over the roof line, the bubble window installed in the sliding side door and some custom decals that I hadn’t seen before.

When Leith returned to his vehicle, he found me trying to peer past the heavily tinted back window to see the fit-out inside. A less trusting person might have thought I was searching for something to steal but Leith is becoming used to the attention his van attracts.

If it were a solid white Toyota Hiace with plastic hubcaps, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second glance but the custom graphics pack hinted at a level of finish inside and I just had to check it out.

There was no question that Leith’s camper van was built by a professional and experienced crew… except it turns out it wasn’t! To say I was surprised when Leith informed me he had built the van himself would be an understatement.

OK technically, Leith carried out the camper van ‘conversion’ while Volkswagen built the van but let’s not get fidgety over details here.

A ‘first timer”, not only did Leith do the entire fit-out himself, he confessed he had never actually owned a campervan before. Talk about hitting it over the fence.

The obvious question was already out of my mouth. Why?

Leith explained that he didn’t originally plan on building his own van but couldn’t find anyone willing to build the van to his personal specification. That and the fact he wanted a 4x4 van with all the trimmings so building it himself saved around $40,000 ($60,000 for the van and $22,000 for the fit-out).

Cutting into the bodywork of a brand new Volkswagen is not for the faint-hearted but Leith is a meticulous planner and took his time so he could get it right the first time.

“The first thing was putting the vents in and the external window. And then I spent a couple of weeks insulating the floor, the roof, the walls,” he explained.

Two weeks for insulation? When I viewed some photos of the build process, I started to understand that this was not just a campervan conversion to save a few dollars. This was a labour of love.

It took Leith 12 months to complete the build and a further two years to perfect things, however the end result is quite remarkable.

The van has an on-board 80 litre drinking water tank with a carbon block filter,  twin 120Ah batteries, 260 watt solar system, a high performance 50 litre fridge freezer by National Luna which Leith tells me can cool down to -18 sitting in 50 degree ambient temperature.

“It’s also very quiet” Jan added; ‘quiet’ a very valid feature for any appliance sharing your bedroom.

Under the bed and accessed from the rear door (which also provides a little shelter) is the kitchen area. There are two wide, deep drawers dedicated to food preparation and these contain just about everything except for the kitchen sink.

Leith built up a frame in steel so the drawers can hold plenty of weight. Cooking is done on a small propane stove, and filtered water comes from a small spout also at the rear . 

When they had a Kedron off-road caravan the couple spent the first year in nothing but caravan parks. But the new van was designed to give them the freedom to stay anywhere and until our photoshoot, the Volkswagen had never been in a caravan park.

Without 240V plug-in power, air conditioning is not terribly practical so instead, a thermostatically controlled extraction fan keeps things comfortable.

Actually, they seem pretty darn chuffed with their entire set-up and so they should be as they plan never to sell it.

“I hope to get 20 years out of it,” Leith told me and while I’m not sure how the new VW vans compare to the old hippy campers still kicking around for longevity, I’m confident Leith’s fit-out will stand the test of time.