Confessions of a Marketplace Day Dreamer

My compulsion to daydream about various camper and road trip setups started over 15 years ago from my Midtown Manhattan office. Back then it was the Samba and Craigslist, where I searched first as a window shopper and then in earnest for a VW Syncro Vanagon. I found my Vanagon, and home for two years, on the Samba in Eureka, Nevada, and flew to Reno on a one-way ticket to pick it up. The entire experience was one of the most exciting of my life. Since then, I’ve owned a half dozen different camper setups and have continued my near-constant daydreaming about what’s the best solution for a road trip. I tend to ping-pong between very capable off-road vehicles and more moderately sized, fuel-efficient vans. The reality is that there is no perfect vehicle, just a balance of priorities, and thus, I am constantly looking on Facebook Marketplace for deals and unicorns.

My philosophy on vehicles is that they should be relatively affordable with an emphasis on reliability. To me, that means anywhere from 10-15 grand on the low end to around 50-60 thousand all in for a more serious use case. Any more than that, and the rig becomes something that’s most likely so expensive that in order to afford it, you have to work so much you don’t have time to use it. Most of the 4x4 Sprinters I see fit into this category and therefore are reserved for Boomers and Trustafarians. The good news is that there are lots of viable options for people to get a road-tripping setup that fits that budget.

With any used car, you are buying the owner just as much as the car itself. I like to talk to the people on the phone and, whenever possible, try to avoid car dealers and salesmen. I am far more concerned with maintenance and ownership than I am with mileage. All of my cars have over 200k miles, and all of them are reliable and ready for a 10k road trip. Ask the person how long they have owned the vehicle, what records they have, and what needs work. Simple details like tire condition, when the last oil change was, and battery age tell me how people take care of a vehicle. A high-mileage vehicle but lots of oil changes, fresh tires, a battery in good health, and major service records is far more appealing to me than a low-mileage vehicle with bald tires and a 7-year-old battery.

This substack is more or less a breakdown of vehicles and camping setups that intrigue me and some basics of what I look for when buying a used car, sometimes sight unseen. The saying goes that “Some stuff catches fish, and some stuff catches fishermen.” Lots of vehicles out there catch fishermen. This breakdown is a list of setups that I would personally buy that are a balance of mobility, living space, fuel efficiency, reliability, and price. By and large, the price is really correlated to size. The smaller and more simple the setup, the less expensive it will be to buy and maintain. Transversely, the larger and more capable the setup, the more expensive it’s going to be. I’m going to break the discussion into three basic price categories: 10-25k setups, including vehicle and setup to camp with; 20k-45k for a vehicle and camper; and lastly, 40-60k for the most capable and largest setups.