Camper vans are sizzling hot right now. Even when sales of travel trailers and motorhomes have dipped, people can’t seem to get enough camper vans. Most of these vans come with a set floorplan that you’re stuck with for the life of the vehicle. Winnebago has teamed up with van conversion company Adventure Wagon to offer something different. The Winnebago + Adventure Wagon 70SE is a modular camper van where you choose the floorplan when you need it.
One of my favorite developments in new RV technology is the modular floorplan. RV manufacturers often offer their wares in a variety of floorplans and one of them may be perfect for you when you buy. Then, later on you may end up feeling that maybe you could use a little more cargo room. Or, maybe you want some space to store a bicycle or dirt bike. You can’t really do that with a fixed floorplan, but you could if your camper allowed you to move things around.
We’ve covered a few of these modular campers in the past. The Happier Camper HC1 is a delightful retro-style fiberglass camper that has a floorplan that works like Lego bricks. Want a motorcycle trailer on Saturday and a camper on Sunday? With the HC1, it’s easy! We’ve also written about VanLab, a company that offers a flat-pack camper van conversion kit with a high degree of modularity. And who can forget our Daydreaming Designer, the Bishop, and his idea to scale a modular camper conversion up to bus size with self-contained pieces that just fit right into place?
Another company working in this space is Adventure Wagon.
Founded in the mid-2010s, the company started out by renting customized Mercedes-Benz Sprinters that were designed with an active lifestyle in mind. Customers loved what they saw and Adventure Wagon started to offer its modular van platform as something that you could buy. According to Adventure Wagon, the company started because its founders wanted to travel the countryside in style, with bikes, skis, gear, and surfboards in tow. They also wanted to be able to carry their friends and beds to sleep in, just in case there wasn’t anywhere to pitch a tent.
Faced with a lot of desires and not many options already on the market, the crew that started Adventure Wagon spent two years making a van that could do all of that and more.
At the heart of an Adventure Wagon conversion is the A-Frame system. This adds strong steel braces throughout the internal structure of the donor van and serves as the backbone of the conversion.
Next comes a plug-and-play electrical system that is run along the A-Frame. The electrical system contains pre-measured leads that can be run for USB and 12V outlets as well as LED lighting. The harness then connects to a house battery. From there, the A-Frame and wiring (there’s also optional insulation) get covered up with upholstered ABS molded plastic, plastic-coated plywood, or bamboo.
Next comes the L-Track system that’s mounted to the A-Frame, and this is what allows an Adventure Wagon to be so modular. Basically, all of your van’s furniture, appliances, and storage can attach to this track. Adventure Wagon’s L-Track system covers the walls, ceiling, and floor to allow practically limitless customization.
Indeed, one day you could have the van loaded down with a bunk bed, gear bags, and a bunch of seats for a road trip. And next, you could delete everything and use your van to haul some motorcycles.
The company has recently partnered up with Winnebago to offer what the pair of companies believe to be the ultimate modular camper van. It starts with a 2023 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 170 before Adventure Wagon fills it up with its A-Frame and L-Track system along with its ‘Mother Of All Beds’ frame and its ‘Mule Bags’ ceiling storage solution.
From there, Winnebago comes in and makes it a more practical camper with its own mattress and other pieces. One piece of this is the counter, which sits on the L-Track and comes equipped with a Dometic faucet feeding from a water jug underneath and using a collapsible basin as a sink. Across from the cabinet setup is a 12V Dometic cooler.
Since the Adventure Wagon conversion doesn’t include residential-style power, there’s a 3.6kWh EcoFlow Delta Pro Portable Power Station mounted to the track in the back. I’ve used this power station’s Delta Mini little sibling and it’s awesome. These can be recharged with an EV charger, a wall outlet, a 12V socket from a car, solar panels, or EcoFlow’s own gas generator.
The 3..6kWh isn’t a ton of capacity, but if you’re conservative with power use I could see it lasting a weekend. Solar panels could extend it out further.
As you’ve probably figured out by now, none of it is particularly elegant. This isn’t pretty like an Airstream camper van and really, it doesn’t even have the looks of a lower-end Winnebago, either. Of course, getting water from the Dometic faucet and power from the EcoFlow makes this feel more DIY than something that you’d get from a factory. And notably absent is a bathroom, and instead, you get just a Thetford Porta Potti.
But what this van loses in aesthetics and some comfort it gains in practicality. All of this stuff can be ripped out, rearranged, deleted, or even added to make the van that you need for a trip.
Since it’s all modular, I don’t see a shower being too hard to add, either. I could see myself using this van for a trip out to King Of The Hammers, where I might have an ATV or something in the back plus the bed, faucet, toilet, and cooler.
I do have some potentially bad news, and it’s that flexibility comes at a cost. The 2023 Winnebago + Adventure Wagon 70SE costs $178,013. That is a huge chunk of change and I’m certain that you could build most of this yourself for a lot cheaper. For those who can’t and have that kind of money, Winnebago will be selling these beginning in February and a quick dealer search shows that they’re already popping up for sale.
(topshot: Sally Torchinsky)
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This is almost the same way I “built” my van~!
We use a goal zero 3k to power everything but lights and fan (12v AC with shore power / engine)
Even doing it with ADF it was only 30k build, and included AC, huge awning, insulation, walls, etc.
The idea of the A frame is great, L Track is good, we decided on the extra strength of E-Track and did steel backing high and low.
I love the idea of a Van I can rent for work and then add all the camping gear in for a weekend.
https://www.arrowplusvan.com
That price is ridiculous.
Mercedes, give the overpriced RV theme a rest. If an RV costs more than a car, then f@#k it. Perhaps Jason and David are paying you too much and you have forgotten how we poors live.
Spec this RV: 2003 Honda Odyssey, 200,000 miles with fades AZ paint, coleman cooler from 2002, 10 year old Big Agnes tent, $5 walmart camp chair, and REI shovel/toilet.
Seconded. This is past a joke.
Please only write stories about affordable campers
Mercedes, I love your coverage of all these neat RV’s, but can you find something somewhat affordable?
I was trying to look up “active lifestyle” but could only find “paying a small fortune so you can poop in your car”.
I want to see a resonably priced kitchen unit with stove, sink, water tank, gray tank, and propane to provide a single chunk of kit that has all the cooking and cleaning stuff together. Removeable of course. My choice to start with would be from a VW Westfalia.
For what its worth, the tracks are exactly what Boeing used for seat tracks in airplanes. Long time ago one could buy such surplus tracks at the now-defunct Boegin Surplus Store in the Seattle area. Sigh.
Just google expediter van supplies. E, L, and other tracks are readily available.
$178K? NFW! Again NFW….WTF winnebago? Are you nuts?
$178K huh? Bwahahahaha!
You should give Wayfarer vans. They do solid simple modular conversions. The kind of thing normal people might be able to afford
HOLY CRAP!?!?! They want to charge $178,013 for a glorified weekend project?
I think a modular camper van is a good idea, especially for someone that wants to run a business out of the van during the week, such as a plumber, electrician or mobile mechanic. Then they can pull out their tools on the weekend, swap in their camping gear and get more use out of the expensive van. But those kind of shoppers are handy and could easily build something like this on their own for far less.
Building-out a Sprinter is NOT easy. Don’t get me wrong — we love ours and it’s not let us down.
Every darned surface in a Sprinter is curved, which makes building ANYTHING a custom job. I pooh-poohed the A-frame system when I started my build, but retrospectively, buying into Adventure Wagon’s worldview would have saved me a lot of time and pretty much brought me to the same place I am today.
L-track is Ah-Maze-Ing. I highly recommend it to van builders. L-track’s only downside is it transfers heat viciously.
I built out an E-250 and *wished* for the straight(-er) walls of a Sprinter. It was difficult, but nowhere near difficult enough to justify the outlandish price described here. Also, you can buy L- and E-track easily online. I had some I threw away after deciding I didn’t need to carry my dirt bike inside the van. The hitch carrier worked a treat.
I’d start with a VW T7 Multivan, 50k with rails and shit built in from the factory.
Jesus….. I thought maybe a factory effort would be more efficient and undercut all the boutique builders. I guess not.
$60000 van with $10000 worth of camping accessories and $100,000 worth of marketing hype for clueless buyers.
At least dealers are honest about it when they rip you off. Market adjustment $100,000. I guess they do not get the reason people go small van and forego toilets isn’t for the fun of racing to a tree or outhouse and doing your business it is to simplify and economically be able to afford it. Paying real RV money for a van is nuts. Buy a few sheds from Lowes and rent a dozen camping sites.
The kit is what I would imagine most people will jump for. We all know of people who converted a panel van into a camping vehicle, this is just making it easier.
At some point though, we will overload the saturation at camping areas. These vans go places that often the Class A&C RV’s cannot. I know around me here in Portland, the popular car camping areas are often booked out 6 months or more in advance.
What are other peoples thoughts on the growth of this market? What about camping saturation in other areas?
It’s an issue here too.
The state of Indiana opens camping reservations at the state parks in January every year. Within a week or so every spot is taken in a 150 spot campground that we like for every weekend between May 1 and September 30.
Here in Illinois, popular campgrounds started booking for this upcoming season before the last season even ended. If you want a spot for the 4th of July you basically should start looking right now! Whenever my family goes camping, we generally pick local ma-and-pop campgrounds that aren’t well-known and those seem to be ok for now.
I noticed something interesting when I went to Tampa. A number of the people who own converted vans and buses didn’t go to campgrounds, but at makeshift camping spots next to highway rest areas, secluded beaches, and other weird spots. I only noticed because I passed by a row of like six skoolies of varying quality and had to pull over to see what was going on.
I have read somewhere that a certain percentage of campgrounds will not allow DIY rigs to camp there. Need to keep the riff-raff out I guess.
Anyone with experience on that here?
I have seen people parking on the shoulder/makeshift areas, around here as well, and it is an option, I just don’t know if Parks Service likes that or condones it.
So like places where dead bodies are usually found? LOL
Here in Maine it’s almost impossible to get multiday reservations for a spot in Acadia or other popular parks. The rolling reservation system is screwy, and I haven’t figured out how the game is played. When we want to spend several nights somewhere we end up moving from one site to another, sometimes just the next one over. It sucks.
Michigan state parks open up spots 6 months to the arrival day. You can book 2 weeks max stay. What’s happening is a lot of people book a week prior to what they really want and just eat the cost of the extra nights . So in the summer you will be at a “full” park that’s a third empty. I’ve camped for years, and it only became this way during the COVID year.
At least dealers are honest about it when they rip you off. Market adjustment $100,000. I guess they do not get the reason people go small van and forego toilets isn’t for the fun of racing to a tree or outhouse and doing your business it is to simplify and economically be able to afford it. Paying real RV money for a van is nuts. Buy a few sheds from Lowes and rent a dozen camping sites.