Best motorhomes or campervans under £45,000

Camper King Monte Carlo 2020

STAR RATING 4.5 OUT OF 5

  • Price £34,995
  • Layout Camper without washroom
  • Sleeps 4
  • Travel seats 5
  • MTLPM 2800kg
  • Length 4.8m

Camper King has been using VW since 2003 and, over that time, has established an enviable reputation, building on pre-owned VW T5s, sourced by them, to offer customers a new build on a used van.

Our pure white Monte Carlo was ‘like new’ and, with its smart white alloys and body, colour-coded bumper/grill and side mirrors, it was really rather impressive. The extending roof doubles up for headroom, as well as housing the extra bed for two. The exterior mains socket and water inlet are placed on the offside. Access is via the side sliding door and inside, you’ll find the tried and tested layout, with offside kitchen and central lounge. The cabin comes with full air conditioning and the front seats swivel around to face the living section.

The side kitchen offers good overall storage; in a short wheelbase, you are a little restricted. The work surface is generous, though, even with the combined gas hob/stainless-steel sink unit. A combi oven/grill is fitted and a small fridge, and with LEDs below the lockers, night lighting is excellent.

It comes with a fold-out crash-tested double bed, which makes up easily. It feels comfortable so should provide a very good night’s sleep. Above, the other double bed is available to make up four berths.

PROs
Five belted seats; generous kitchen worksurface

CONs
Limited space in wardrobe; fridge may be big enough for two but not four people

Read more in our Camper King Monte Carlo review

Ventura VR200 2018

STAR RATING 4.5 OUT OF 5

  • Price £29,995
  • Layout Camper without washroom
  • Sleeps 2
  • Travel seats 2
  • Length 4.96m

It’s rare to find a fully fledged campervan for under £30,000, but that is what Ventura has delivered.The standard, Peugeot Boxer-based model has all the basics: an M1-tested rock-and-roll bed that doubles as a three-belted seat, a swivelling cab passenger seat, Vohringer furniture construction (with a number of finishes to choose from), overhead storage units, and a leisure battery with inverter, smart charger and a control panel.

In the standard kitchen you get a Webasto Isotherm 49-litre fridge, a twin gas ring hob-and-sink combo with glass lid, LED downlighters, a 23-litre freshwater tank 
and pump, and a 23-litre waste-water tank.

All of this is on the basic £29,999 ’van, but there’s plenty more kit that you can add on to create your ideal camper. The ’van that we tested had a number of add-ons, starting with the external decal pack (£695) and colour-matched front and rear three-quarter bumpers (£595), and a colour-matched pop-top roof (£2995).

As well as the pop-top itself, which gave much appreciated headroom, the rooftop bed and mattress (£780) were added to provide an extra two berths. If the rooftop bed isn’t 
in use, the mattress can be laid across the rock-and-roll bed to make it even more comfortable.

PROs
Hugely flexible
Good build quality

CONs
Price soon starts to increase as you add options

Read more in our Ventura VR200 review

Randger R535 2019

STAR RATING 4.5 OUT OF 5

  • Price £43,995
  • Layout Camper with washroom
  • Sleeps 4
  • Travel seats 4
  • MTLPM 3010kg
  • Length 5.4m

On paper, the 535 seems like a winning formula – and not just because in its 5.4m length you get a kitchen, a washroom and a lounge. You also get a sliding door on each side, Pullman-style seating for more sociability, and an extra seat by the door.

Yet none of this is obvious from the outside. In fact, because of its length and its fairly sedate exterior graphics – and especially because of its tinted windows – you could easily park this in your office car park and nobody would be the wiser.

The Randger is based on the Fiat Talento. We found it very smooth running, with a smart gearshift from the six-speed manual gearbox. The steering is also nicely weighted and the brakes felt pleasingly strong when they were required.

The kitchen is really this campervan’s pièce de résistance. The workspace available – to the right of the sink by the table, and another well-lit raised area at the back of the ‘van – is more than you might get in some much larger ‘vans. There’s a two-burner gas hob with ignition, and a sink that is fairly standard-sized for a campervan.

The roof bed, which you access via a ladder that clips on to the rear of the roof opening, is huge. The mattress that comes with it, however, is a little thin, so it might feel too firm for some people without the addition of a topper. The smaller, lower bed is made up via the table and an extra panel that’s stored in the wardrobe. It’s a bit of a faff, although a relatively easy process – if there are just two of you, you might prefer to simply use the roof bed instead.

It’s rare to see a washroom in a campervan with a rising roof, but the Randger R535 has one. It’s not massive, but that the designers have managed to squeeze one in at all is a clever feat.

PROs
Brilliant designed kitchen
Spacious dinette area

CONs
Limited storage

Read more in our Randger R535 review

Bailey Advance 59-2 2019

STAR RATING 4.5 OUT OF 5

  • Price £44,499
  • Layout End kitchen
  • Sleeps 2
  • Travel seats 2
  • MTLPM 3500kg
  • Length 5.99m

This addition to Bailey’s entry-level Advance range packs a lot into a compact layout. As with the mid-market Alliance, the 59-2 is the baby of the family; both have the same end-kitchen, front-lounge floorpan. The differences lie in the detail – the Alliance sits mid-market, while the Advance is Bailey’s entry-level motorhome range. You can see one of the prime differences straight away: while the Alliance’s cab has a graphite paint job, the Advance gets the more usual white finish. There’s also no wind-out awning fitted here.

The end-kitchen gets the same spacious storage capacity, but has a darker-coloured work surface. In the front lounge, the upholstery is also different to the Alliance’s – here, it’s in a ‘Hampstead’ colour scheme, along with scatter cushions and smart curtains.

Up front, the Peugeot Boxer cab looks more or less identical to that in the Alliance, but again, there are some subtle differences, including the fact that there’s no sat-nav system fitted here (the Advance does, however, still get a DAB radio). Under the bonnet sits the 130bhp version of Peugeot’s 2.0-litre Blue HDi engine.

PROs
Sub-6m model with all the benefits that this brings

CONs
Lack of a fly screen to the accommodation door

Read more in our Bailey Advance 59-2 review

Elddis Autoquest CV60 2020

STAR RATING 4.5 OUT OF 5

  • Price £42,099
  • Layout Van conversion, rear lounge
  • Sleeps 2
  • Travel seats 2
  • MTLPM 3500kg
  • Length 5.99m

Winner of our Motorhome of the Year Award for 2020 and Best high-top van conversion, our judges were impressed by the Elddis Autoquest CV60 (also known, in Compass guise, as the Avantgarde CV60). It includes a French bed in the rear, regularly seen in coachbuilt motorhomes, but a rarity in a van conversion.This bed can also be folded up to become a daybed, which forms the central feature of the rear lounge.

The CV van conversion range is rather unusual for Elddis, because it is based on the Fiat Ducato rather than the Peugeot Boxer, as all of its other models are. Both base vehicles run off the same Sevel production line in Italy, but this change does mean you could soon benefit from Fiat’s new nine-speed auto-gearbox – if you think it’s worth paying extra for (an extra £2,000 for the 140-bhp engine, or £3,000 to get 160bp).

Although the main lounge is at the rear, once you have swivelled the cab seats, there is a sitting area up front – and this is where the pedestal table goes. The rear lounge is very homely. The bed pushed back into daybed position makes for a comfortable sofa, even though shorter people might find that they have to sit with their feet dangling if they sit near the back of the ‘van.

The kitchen isn’t hugely generous: you only get a three-burner gas hob, a relatively small sink and a Thetford Triplex oven and grill. But there are plenty of good points about it. It’s very well lit, for starters, with two LED lights shining down from underneath the lockers and a third one in front of them.

Pulling out the bed could not be easier – although you might have to lift it up slightly to get over the carpet. The backrest slips down easily to form the mattress, with a little extra attached cushion at the end to take account of the corner. You are then left with a superbly comfortable bed.

The shower in the central washroom extends out of the large salad bowl-style handbasin in the corner. There is only one drainage hole in the tray below, by the side of the circular toilet, but at least the tray itself is deep and a roof vent should take the steam away.

PROs
Comfortable French bed day and night
Lots of varied storage space

CONs
No accent lighting in the washroom

Read more in our Elddis Autoquest CV60 review

For more campervans check out Best campervans over £50,000 or Best campervans under £50,000 or why not consider a motorhome. And if you’re actually considering purchasing a touring caravan, hop across to our sister site, Practical Caravan, where you’ll find our buying guides with vans for all sorts of different criteria.


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