Full review

At Campervan we’ve made no secret of our love for Volkswagen’s new Crafter. Volkswagen themselves know that they’re on to a winner and the pleasing thing is that they’re planning to bring out their own campervan based on the Crafter. But what if a customer wants something more spacious and luxurious? One VW dealership that reckons they’ve solved this is the Birmingham Van Centre who decided to get around the problem by commissioning a high-end Crafter campervan. The firm they picked to carry out the work was Rhales Conversions, which is run by former yacht-builder, Richard Hales.

The build begins With a spec and price agreed upon, the deal was that Birmingham Van Centre would supply a high-spec Crafter to Richard and then pay him to convert it. They’d then sell it via their dealership as a sort of toe-in-the-water exercise. You have to admire the fact that they really went for it in terms of the specification. 

With this in mind, they ordered a top-spec Crafter CR35 long-wheelbase with a high roof (it’s 6.84m long and 2.59m tall unconverted) in flagship Highline spec finished in Indium Grey metallic paintwork, which is a businesslike stylish grey trim. The Highline spec is generous and the standard kit includes Climatic air-conditioning, the usual electric windows and heated mirrors, multifunction steering wheel, Bluetooth phone system, stability control and emergency city braking (which brakes automatically if something leaps out in front). You also get front fog lights with corner-assistance, a four-way lumbar-adjustable front seat (heaven for anyone with a bad back), adaptive cruise control (which adjusts the speed to keep its distance with traffic), front and rear parking sensors and, best of all for the British winter, a heated windscreen.

On top of this, Birmingham Van Centre specced their Crafter with a single swivelling passenger seat, the Discover Media navigation system with 8-inch touchscreen, Driver Assistance Pack A (side parking sensors) and Pack C (lane keeping assistance, lane change assist and rear traffic alert). 

The layout of the vehicle is based on a tried and tested design that Rhales have been doing for a number of years and features a side settee that faces the sliding door and simply pulls outwards to form the bed, with banks of cabinets behind this offering storage cabinets. To the rear is a washroom and shower compartment, while the very rear section of the van features a separate storage area that’s suitable for mountain bikes, outdoor furniture or any of those items that you don’t want to drag through the interior.

It’s worth taking time to appreciate the level of effort that has gone into this handbuilt van. Take the curved doors on the overhead lockers, for example. You’d expect these to be bought off the shelf from some Italian conglomerate that makes 20,000 a year and simply ships them out to converters, but you’d be wrong. In actual fact, each one is handmade and built up from a number of layers of ply, carefully glued together and finished with a facing panel on the inner and outer edges. A former then clamps the whole assembly firmly in place in a vacuum bag until they’re set permanently to shape. They’re then trimmed to size and edge-banded on each side (even the curved ones which is particularly tricky). These four doors took Richard a full two days to make.

To the rear of the lounge is the kitchen pod, which includes a smart black-enamel Thetford sink and a black-glass trimmed two-burner gas hob. There’s not a lot of worktop space around the sink and hob, but with a long section of worktop opposite and a flip-up extension by the hob, this isn’t likely to be an issue. There’s also a Smev warming oven and grill inset into the kitchen pod, but it’s clear that this van is better suited as a party van, thanks to the large 90-litre Virifrigo fridge hidden behind that neat handmade curved panel. Underneath the fridge is an innovative storage unit that glides out on beefy ball-raced rails and houses a large shelved storage unit and is topped with another section of worktop. It’s accessed via curved edge-bound holes and together with a second storage unit – that slides out from under the hob – offers plenty of room for foodstuffs, as well as all your crockery and pots and pans.

Opposite the kitchen area there’s more storage offered with the cabinet housing two massive deep drawers and two smaller ones above. The front edge of this unit houses a black tambour door with a couple of shelves inside. Above this cabinet are the controls for all the electrical systems and to the rear is a couple of wardrobes covered by tambour doors.

Behind the kitchen area you’ll find a three-quarter width washroom, with a Thetford bench cassette loo with electric flush. Above this is a flip-up sink and a walnut-effect twin-doored storage cabinet. A separate tap feeds the shower and there’s plenty of room for tall folk in here (the internal height of the van is 6ft 3.5 inches). One wall is finished in cream, while another is trimmed in a walnut-effect panel and has a large mirror on it. High-quality chrome taps and hanging hooks complete the practicalities. It’s fed by an 85-litre water tank, linked to a 52-litre waste water tank with a neat pair of clearly labelled drain taps fitted in a panel under the sill. The gas-powered hot water system is fed by a 20-litre underslung LPG tank that also powers the gas hob and oven. 

Electrical gadgets abound in this vehicle and we could fill the whole magazine with a detailed description of each, so we have to have a whistle-stop tour around these. At least that’s my excuse, some looked quite complicated! As well as Truma Combi 4E heating linked to a Truma iNet system which can be activated via Truma’s app on your smartphone, there’s a Sterling Power battery-to-battery system and a 100W solar panel linked to a high-quality MPPT solar regulator to help keep the 110Ah leisure battery topped up. This kit is housed in the garage, with a removable panel allowing access for easy maintenance.

Entertainment is taken care of by a roof-mounted Alden satellite system that links to the wall-mounted flatscreen TV in the lounge area. This TV screen is also linked to the vehicle's security camera system, which includes a front and rear dashcam system that records to a 500GB hard-drive. There is even a provision to add a couple of side cameras to this system for full 360-degree recordings. At night you can simply switch on the TV and check for prowlers if you’re disturbed in the night, so it's great for peace of mind. Motorhome Wifi have supplied one of their systems for this van and it also sports plenty of 240V, USB and 12V sockets for your gadgets.

If you enjoyed this review, you can read loads more like it in Campervan magazine. You can get a digital version of this latest issue of Campervan magazine here.