Auto Campers Day Van

Berths: 2-4 Travel seats: 2-8 Base vehicle: Ford Tourneo Custom SWB Maximum weight: 3,000kg Payload: 640kg (with 4 seats and furniture)

Auto Campers’ modular, removable-furniture Leisure Van - now called the Day Van - won our 2015 Campervan of the Year award.

It comes in Lo-Line (1.97m overall fixed roof height), Hi-Line (2.44m) and Pop-Top (with rear-hinged Reimo lifting roof and £500 optional roof bed) forms. It’s this last version we test here.

All three versions start out as eight-seaters. Buyers can then specify optional furniture and remove seating. We tested the Day Van as a four-seater.

The Tourneo Custom’s shape is a couple of years old now, but it still looks fresh. Auto Campers offers the full range of Ford’s 2.2-litre Duratorq TDCi engines. While the 123bhp engine we tested (which adds £1,000 to the price of the standard 99bhp Pop-Top) was fine in a lightly loaded ‘van, if you start using the 640kg payload paying another £1,000 for the 153bhp engine would make sense. The Tourneo’s cab and driving position make it as easy to drive as a car.

The standard Day Van comes with eight seats. In the test layout, two single seats and a double bench were retained. With these seats fitted on the nearside, there’s room down the offside for a kitchen module and two stacking modules (£800 each) with shelves and tambour doors running in line with the kitchen.

The £1,700 kitchen module we tested here is a simple offering. There’s storage for a few cups between the two removable 12-litre bottles for fresh and waste water in the cupboard, which also houses a portable loo.

Another £2,700 version of the kitchen is now available, with a fixed hob. This unit uses a pair of 40-litre underfloor water tanks that can be disconnected when not needed, so kitchen storage is improved.

There are two options for downstairs beds: a longitudinal bed made up of slats (£800) and a bed extension cushion with a solid base (£200) which works if you want to fit the stacking storage modules. Leave the stacking storage out, pay an additional £150 for an infill cushion, and you can make a transverse bed suitable for children.

While the longitudinal bed was comfortable, the slats are a bit of a pain to fit and remove.

Upstairs, things are much simpler. There’s a full two-metre bed length up there, although the mattress width is a little less generous.

This is an abridged version of the full review appearing in the July 2015 issue of MMM.

Only in the self-build market can buyers specify the interior of their vehicle to this extent. But where the self-build market has many pitfalls for the inexperienced or over ambitious, the Day Van offers a well-engineered, and thoroughly tested, set of combinations on a well-proven base vehicle.