Having decided that we need a campervan/motorhome for next year, the hunt is on. We have rapidly come to the conclusion that an actual campervan/motorhome is well beyond our pockets as they seem to hold their value ridiculously well, even twenty year old motorhomes are fetching £6000-£7000. Thus we find ourselves not wanting what we can afford because it is just too old.
The obvious conclusion is to buy a van and convert it ourselves, thus last Saturday found us in South Wales at a commercial vehicle auction looking at Ambulances. My original thoughts were to buy and ambulance given that half the conversion work has already been done, unfortunately though the some of the ambulances on offer were within our price range at only 7 years old they were real rust buckets. The worst were those based Fiat Ducatos which is some what worrying as it seems to be the current vehicle of choice for motorhome manufacturers.
However the the weekend was not a total loss as we had the opportunity to closely inspect a whole range of vehicle makes, models and ages. As a result we have rejigged our budget and reformulated our ideas: Whilst an ambulance is still on the list due to their high mileage we are quite specific in our requirement, it has to be a UVG conversion based on a LWB Mercedes Sprinter. Also on the list is a LWB Hi-top crew cab van, what became apparent at the auction was that given the same basic model and age of van minibuses were the most expensive, next were the plain vans and the cheapest were crewcab vans. This actually works in our favour, a minibus would require some of the windows either being removed or blacked out, a van would require windows fitting whilst a crew cab vans are only half glazed.