My mission :- To build the best overland camper ever.
It started in 1981 with a custom-built camper for racing dirt bikes by Jim and Dot.
The Jones family has continued on for decades building better and better campers.
After 17 years with Merlin our 4×4 overlander truck and having designed ,built and raced Dakar cars for 15 years I knew what was next.
The Breif :-
- It must be very very good off-road, no compromise, I didn’t want too get somewhere and be told the track is impassable or too narrow for my camper, diff locks , uprated everything, traction control, Land Rover Defender approach and departure angle etc etc,
- Simple , easy to fix and easy to source spare parts, using OEM available stuff for the critical items like engine and running gear
- A huge comfy bed, I am very big and I like to spend the morning lying in bed 🙂
- Be able to sit inside comfortable at night and for eating meals
- All equipment must be ale to be used with the bed down, ie toilet, fridge cooker and access to all storage
- For One person to be able to stay in bed while the second has full use downstairs
- NO wood, so now rot, the inside must be able to be washed out, all boxes sealed to keep any dust out
- Great insulation, A/c and good living area heater.
- Winch and full spares package, so we are self sufficient as much as possible;
- With all that spec , the base vehicle must weigh the same as the original Range Rover i.e. 2200kg
- And the max fully loaded weight with fuel water and 2 people must keep to the max gross weight of the Range Rover.
- No Budget restraint. well it depends who’s asking. I started with 10K gbp and it grew to three times that.
Easy brief , how hard can it be 🙁