hey welcome back to the channel and welcome to another video now this video is called the five most important things to consider when buying a VW Camper van now I actually did a video about two years ago called 10 things that you must consider when buying a VW Camper van but things have moved on quite a lot in the past couple of years uh we've worked with a lot more uh customers we've sold a lot more Camper vans and we've got to really know our customers a lot more over the past couple of years uh and we know exactly what people are looking for but most importantly we also know what question uh our customers have when they're in the research process of buying a VW Camper so depending on how far down the rabbit hole you are with your research into VW campers uh you probably started to realize that it's a bit of a Minefield uh and there are lots and lots of different choices and options out there uh which really does all depend on the kind of budget that you've got for a VW Camper so if you are new to this Channel and you've not watched any of my videos before make sure you do hit that subscribe button because I do share a lot of content on YouTube answering questions that we get on a regular basis from our subscribers and from our customers so make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any of my future videos and if any questions do come up as I'm going through this video make sure you put them in the comment section below and we will get back to you as quickly as we can to answer your questions and also make sure you hang around until the end of this video because all five things that I'm going to cover uh in this video are really important and you really do need to think about these things uh and really work out the best route for you okay so make sure you hang around until the end and I'm going to get started now on my first point okay so the first thing I want to talk about is the most important thing because everything else doesn't really matter until you've worked this part of it out and that is the overall budget that you've got for a camper and VW campers are just like most things in life it all comes down to how much budget you have for something or how much money you're willing to pay for a certain products or service and this is especially true with VW campers you've probably noticed that the price tags are quite high on VW campers in particular compared to other brands of campan and that's down to a number of reasons mainly because VW as a brand just commands more money and there's more demand for those particular Vans and that pushes the price up uh but also down to the quality of the vehicles as well now we only work on VW Transporters we don't convert any other brand of van we decided to do that right from the start purely because we know that the demand is always there and the quality of the base vehicle like I say is normally better than most other uh Vehicles out there so when it comes to us working with a customer the first thing we ask them is what is your overall budget and the reason we ask that question is because that really helps us to work out the best Way Forward for you in terms of getting the best possible camper band that ticks the right boxes for you uh for the right price uh so once we know what your budget is and what you can push that to uh we can then kind of reverse engineer the process and work out which base vehicle is going to be the right base vehicle you know and what kind of age and mileage is realistic and then we can then start looking at the conversion itself so the budget really depends on the base vehicle and how old that particular van is okay so if you have a budget of under £50,000 then that is going to require you to have a slightly older vehicle with a few more miles on the clock now most customers that buy our bands are in the market for a fairly new based vehicle usually anywhere between 12 months and two years sometimes we do get delivery mile vans in so we get Nearly New vans in but that tends to be the kind of Base vehicle that our customers are looking for um and if you do want a van that's kind of a 22 23 play and you want a brand new conversion then you are going to be looking at very late 50,000 and as and as high as into the 70,000 uh but it really does all depend like I say on the base vehicle spec and the model of that van now of course the more budget that you've got the more boxes you can have ticked okay so if you're going to be very specific very particular about the type of camper you want and you want a particular color you want very very low miles so I'm talking under 10,000 miles and you want a high line and you want an automatic and you want a tailgate and you want all those boxes tick in and then you also want that brand new conversion then a realistic budget is going to be early to mid-60s uh possibly a little bit more but if your budget is £50,000 or under there will be sacrifices that do need to be made and that will be on the base vehicle itself in terms of mileage and the age of the actual van itself and I have covered this topic quite a lot in other videos in the channel so make sure you you check out my other videos but the reality is if you do want a nearly new van with low miles and a high spec then you are going to be looking at those kind of numbers so the first thing to think about is really how much budget can you allocate to a camper of course you do have to be careful with the money side of things you don't want to push yourself too far and overextend yourself but at the same time it does pay to uh try and maximize the amount of budget that you allocate because that's going to give you uh the best possible end result in terms of being really happy with the camper that you drive away in okay so once you've come to a decision on the budget side of things the second thing that you need to kind of start thinking about is the model of the bass band that you want and also the color and I have also done a video talking specifically about the different color options uh of VW campers so I will put a link up here somewhere to that video that I did on on your color choices so make sure you check that one out but the color of the band that you want does come into the end price of the camper because certain colors do command more more money uh when you go to buy the base vehicle because certain colors are more popular than others but also there are just more of certain colors uh so that does come into the overall price of the camper so what I advise all of our customers to do is really trying to eliminate the colors that you do not really want so the colors that you would not accept uh and try and be a little bit flexible on the color uh because the more specific you are about the color of the camper you want the less base vehicles that are going to be available and like I said that will come into the final price of the camper as well so for example if you only wanted an Indian gray van and you wouldn't accept any other color and it had to be a Highline and it had to have a tailgate then of course that's going to reduce the size of the availability of that particular van which is going to make it harder to find that particular van or camper uh and it's also probably going to push the price up a little bit so the more flexible you can be on the color the better really now in terms of the model of the van there are four main models of Transporter there is the start line which is the bog standard van which doesn't come with Alloys it doesn't come with color coded bumpers uh some of them don't have air conditioning so they are very very basic Vans the second one is a trend line which has slightly more trim and a few other extras and then you jump up to the Highline spec which is what most of our customers are looking for we only ever really buy Highline Vans because the spec on those vans matches very closely to a lot of cars so you get things like adaptive cruise control and air conditioning and electric folding mirrors and all the little kind of modc that you get on a car so most people do want High lines but if you do want to keep your cost low but still be in a sort of a slight younger vehicle then going for a start line with maybe a business pack on it which gives you a few other extras on it that would be another option for you because that will reduce the price of the camper quite a bit probably 4 or 5,000 if you go for a slightly lower model uh in the range so color is really important so what I would do is sit down with a pen and paper and just go through the different colors uh and work out which ones that you definitely don't want so that might be red or it might be blue and then just try and be as flexible as you can with the colors and do your research but like I said check out my video on uh color options on VW transport Waters okay so the third thing that you need to think about uh which we get asked about a lot we get asked about this particular topic literally on a daily basis and that is do you go for a rock and roll bed like this one here or do you go for a rib bed setup uh so I'm going to just quickly run through the differences between the rock and roll bed and the rib bed and as I'm going through this I will put some video content up of a rib bed setup as well as a rock and roll just so you can see the differences between the two with a rock and roll bed you are essentially sitting on the same side or same side of the cushions that you sleep on so this just basically lies flat then you put a mattress on top of it and you're just sleeping on the same side with the ribed these cushions actually flip over so you're actually sitting on a different side that you actually lie on and the cushions that we use on our rock and roll beds are quite thick we use really good quality cushions so they are really comfy to sit on and also sleep on uh but a lot of people do say they prefer the rib bed just because the cushions are a quite a lot thicker and you do have an indentation in the seat as well so it's a little bit more comfortable to sit in uh and people do swear by rib beds and a lot of people will only accept a rib bed they wouldn't even entertain a rock and roll bed uh but it really is horses for courses it's down to personal taste so the actual design of the bed is different so the way that it collapses and the way that you uh kind of turn it into a bed changes between the two that's one of the differences the other difference with a rock and roll bed is that they are fixed into the van right to the rear of the van so when you open the boot up uh the back of the rock and roll bed goes right to the back of the van but you do have a nice big storage space underneath the rock and roll bed for you know for storing things as well and but the great thing about a rock and roll bed and why I actually prefer them is that because they are fixed further into the van right to the back of the van it does maximize the amount of space that you've got in the living area because the beds pushed as far back as it will go so it gives you a nice amount of room in the front uh in the actual living area whereas with a ribed they are fixed into the van a little bit further forward so you do lose nearly a foot of space inside the actual living area but then what people really like about the ribed is that you do then gain that space in the back of the van so you'll see from the pictures on the screen now that you get a nice boot space at the back which does allow you to store things it gives you a lot more storage space uh which a lot of people do prefer so you may have seen some campers with like rails on the floor so you can actually Slide the bed up and down the van so that is an option on the ribed setup but unfortunately those rail systems are really really expensive they're about £3,000 extra to have the rail system put in so that is an extra that we can offer to our customers if they do want a rib bed with sliders but that does increase the overall cost of the camper so on the rock and roll bed set up like this one there isn't an option to have those rails in the vans so you can't move a rock and roll bed up and down the van that's just not an option uh but you can on the rib bed and the reason that we put rock and roll beds into most of our campers is just because we feel it maximizes the space and it also keeps the overall cost of the camper down but if you do choose to use our source and convert service and you're specking one of our bands from scratch then of course you can choose the ribed set up but just know that it does cost a little bit more especially if you want the rib bed to be upholstered like we do with all of our rock and roll beds so the rib bed versus rock and roll bed is a topic that comes up a lot it's a question that people ask us on a regular basis and it's a really important thing to think about if you are considering get a VW Camper just do your research and work out which one's going to work best for you on a day-to-day basis okay so the fourth thing that you need to think about which is something that a lot of newbies don't really think about because it's just another thing to kind of consider and that is whether you have a single passenger seat or whether you have a double passenger seat now nearly all VW Transporters that have come off the production line have a double passenger seat as standard because ultimately they've been manufactured as a van as a commercial vehicle uh so I would say probably 90% of the vans that we see even Nearly New Vans have a double passenger as standard now there are pros and cons to a double and to a single so I'm going to quickly run through the pros and cons to both and then as I'm talking about that I'll put some examples on the screen of a double passenger seat and also a single so the main benefit of having a double passenger seat of course is that you do have uh extra capacity you can have more people in the van so you can have three people in the front and you can have two people uh in the back of the van whereas if you have a single passenger seat obviously that reduces the capacity by one person so that might be something that you do need to consider depending on how many people you are planning to travel with now another benefit of a double passenger seat is that you can actually use that as storage space because the double passenger seat cushion does actually lift up and you can use the space inside the seat as a storage solution so this is quite a big benefit because it gives you that extra bit of storage space uh if you've got a double passenger seat now the third Pro to having a double passenger seat is the fact that when we fit a swivel to a double we use a sliding mechanism okay so that means that you can swivel the seat round but you can also Slide the seat right out into the van and pull it right up to the table so that you can all sit close together around the table in the back but on the single seat although you do get a swivel on that it doesn't have a sliding mechanism so the single seat is still fixed right to the front of the van but but it's swiveled round so some people really like the idea of being able to slide that seat right out into the van uh so that you can all sit together so that really is something important to consider when you are choosing between a single or a double seat so there are two real Main benefits of having a single passenger seat as opposed to a double and the first pro is that because you've got a gap between the single passenger seat and the driver's seat you've got quite a big gap there it means you can actually get into the back of the van without actually getting out of the van so in the UK when the weather's bad quite a lot of the time and it's thrown it down with rain or wind outside uh it means you don't have to get out to get into the back of the you can slide between the two seats and have that access which is a really big benefit to a lot of people uh and they do like a single seat for that reason but I think the main reason that most people go for a single passenger seat is because they say it's a lot more comfortable than a double uh because the double seat when it's got a swivel mechanism on it it is quite elevated you are quite high up so if you're quite a tall person then you are your head does get quite near to uh to the roof whereas a single seat is slightly lower um and they are just a bit more comfortable to sit in because with a single capped in passenger seat you've got the armrest on the side and they're just a bit more comfortable on Long Journeys so I think that's probably the main reason that a lot of our customers ask us to take the double passenger seat out and replace it with the single but the con to doing that is that single seats do cost quite a lot uh because a lot of people are taking the doubles out and putting uh replacing them with the single uh so that pushes the cost of the single seats up so if the van that you've bought to be converted by us or if you chose one of our vehicles that's got a double passenger seat uh we can replace that with a single but just be aware that it's about £1,200 plus that for us to replace a double for a single okay so the fifth and final point that I want to talk about is whether you go and actually buy your own uh VW transporter based vehicle you go and Source the van yourself you go and buy the van and then you take it to a conversion company like us or whether you go to a conversion company who offers a sourcing service whereby they will actually go and find the right base vehicle for you based on your budget and spec uh and then work with you to convert that into your dream camper so this really depends on how involved you want to be in the process because some of our customers don't mind doing that side of it they used to buying vehicles uh and they're comfortable with doing that and they want to go off to VW and and find a Bas band go and buy that go and purchase that vehicle and then bring it to a conversion company so that's your first option but the second option is that you get some help from a company who will help you actually Source the base vehicle and deal with the whole sales process and about 90% of our customers do use our VW approved source and convert service because they just don't know what they're looking for they worried about choosing the right type of Van they don't want to deal with all the sales process and working out all the logistics and getting delivery and all that kind of thing because it is a bit of a chore especially if you're not used to buying vehicles and because we buy so many Vans we're buying between 50 and 70 Vans a year and we have some very very good contacts at VW that we deal with literally on a monthly basis uh we're able to get fairly good prices on Vans we're able to get hold of stock uh that's not available to the public and we do all the sourcing and finding the right vehicle for you so that is the most popular option with our customers and I actually recorded a video about two or three weeks ago called why 90% of our customers use our source and convert service so I'm going to put a link up here somewhere to that video that's definitely worth checking out because I talk through the three main options that you've got when it comes to getting a VW Camper obviously one is that you gone buy a completed camper van it's ready to go uh or you go and buy your own base vehicle and take it to a conversion company or you use a source and convert service so make sure you do check out that video above because I do talk through all of these options uh in a lot more detail okay so that's my five most important things that you need to consider when you are buying a a VW Camper van uh if you've got any questions about any part of this video anything that I've covered please do put them in the comment section below and I will personally get back to you I will reply to you personally uh to answer your questions and if you'd like to speak to me on the phone and get any of your questions answered and just find out uh more about some of the things that I've covered you can book a call with me in my calendar if you just go to our website which is highli campus. co.uk uh go to the contact page and you'll be able to schedule a call in my calendar there and I will give you a call for a chat and also if you haven't already downloaded our two guides we've got our VW Camper buyers guide which you can see here that's where we talk through the whole process of buying a VW Camper if you are completely new to this so I'll put a link to that guide just below this video in the description below and then we've also got our conversion spec guide where we outline all four of our conversion packages all the features in each of those packages uh plus the prices as well so I will put a link to the conversion spec guide in the description below as well and you can get both of those guides on the homepage of our website okay so that's it for this video I really hope you've got value from this and if you haven't subscribed to our Channel make make sure you do that and make sure you hit that notification Bell so you don't miss any of my future videos and if you got value from this video please also consider hitting that like button it really helps to support the channel and please feel free to share this video with any of your friends if you think they will get benefit from it and I will see you in the next video take [Music] soon
