Mercedes Sprinter Vans and Dodge Promaster Vans make great camping vehicles. While they relatively new in the US, they been building these “Caravans” in Europe for decades. A week after returning from my first road trip through the Pacific Northwest, I sold my Tundra (with a Callen Camper shell) and picked up the world’s ugliest 2005 Dodge Sprinter. After a lot of hard work and roughly 4 months later, I had completed my road-trip ready camping beast. The Sprinter was really fun to drive, strong as an ox, got great gas mileage and had a ton of room.
When designing my vehicle, I spent a lot of time on Youtube, Google images and Pinterest. The big dilemma that I (and I am sure many others) had was that I am not a small mammal. I am a little over 6’2″ – too short for the NBA (or perhaps it’s my lack of talent) and too tall to sleep across a Sprinter van. The darn things, at least my older 2005 T1N Sprinter, aren’t wide enough for me to stretch out and sleep. I ended up putting my bed lengthwise which ate up a lot of space. Not optimal, but it worked.
I found a Caravan company in Germany, Domo Reisvan, that had created a really awesome concept – a forward bed that pulls down from the ceiling. Their website is all in German but if you use the Google Chrome browser, you can easily translate it into english. If anyone decides to build a DIY version of this, please let me know and I will feature you on NormBucker.com
