Oregon Van Builder: Our Positive Experience with Axis Vehicles
By Mark HoldenImportance of Quality Craftsmanship in a Campervan
If you ask my wife how I research major purchases, she’ll tell you stories of me talking so frequently about it she has gone mad. She might even summarize only doctoral candidates spend as much time researching but they are looking at useful things. I don’t deny this, except I find the right gear at the right time to be very useful. She’ll also tell you I don’t know everything (debatable, although my kids are wising up too). This sort of hard-driving madman research isn’t for everyone. But it does give me some knowledge I happily share with others.
Disclaimer: We have an Axis Vehicle Outfitters built van. We bought one under our own will after years of research. AVO did not ask me to write this nor compensate me to do so. It came from the passion I have developed for the outdoors, vans, and the many awesome people who make up the van industry.
Sometimes we are lucky enough to work with a company that meet your needs to well you wonder what you did to deserve. These are the kind of companies where money is well spent and I am happy to support. This was our experience with AVO summed up. From The Revolver layout, to communication, the attentiveness, the expertise that the AVO team posses is impressive.
Let’s start with the first question. What drew us to AVO?
We were looking at Sportsmobiles and had begun to engage with them. The pricing for a new van build or even a used one was a hard pill to swallow. But they were the first van company we found who came close to sleeping 4 people thanks to the pop-top. Turns out there are downsides to a pop-top which were familiar to us from our pop-up trailer experience.
One evening while I mulled over this and continued to drool at van pictures on Sportsmobile’s website ROAMERICA was mentioned as having vans for rent near our home. I thought to myself “let’s go have a little mini luxury vacay and rent one of these pricey beasts to see what the family thinks of the whole thing.” That is what’s called planting the seed folks ;-) This idea + the fun we had + COVID secured mom’s vote and confirmed dad’s idea that this is what we were looking for. There was still the question of money and while we loved much about the Econoline; the head room, opening and closing of the pop-top, and four season comfort left things undecided. I researched changing out the seats and talked with Sportmobile about it but they told me was it would be a whole new build and they couldn’t do that with the Econoline. I’d been talking with one salesmen and he assured me in so many words, there was no deal to be had so the price was the price; something like $135K for a nice used one and much more for new. My wife and I walked away.
I then found VanDoIt. I was more impressed with their economical design. My wife was never into the design though. After wheeling and dealing (they like to spread the VanDoIt brand through reps) I was underwhelmed by their personal rep offer. What really caused us to shy away, was I had a harder and harder time seeing how the van would sleep the four of us especially as the kiddos grew. We walked away and went back to our think tank.
Now by this time I had seen AVOs preliminary van build once or twice as Chris (ROAMERICA’s day-to-day guy, an awesome person, and general outdoor dude at large) offered to show us when we looked at the Econoline to rent. My wife liked the build the moment she saw it. I was a bit worried about bench seating/lap belt safety for our kiddos. Why? Well I have held several minor safety roles in my primary industry and I live by hope for the best but plan for the worse. While accidents are rare they do happen and having a customized vehicle means doing your due diligence during the planning phase to have as much safety as feasible.
Customization Options for Your Adventure Campervan
Remember how I mentioned what a pleasure it is to work with a company that knows what you’re saying and how to address it? Taylor and Gretchen told us about a new seat that had been developed and they had one coming. This seat addressed all of our worries. At that point AVO had stepped up to the plate and knocked it out of the park for us. We drove home that day with silly grins knowing we were gonna have a van.
Let me backup one moment. After giving up on a van that was the price of our first house, we had added a Vanagon Westfalia Syncro. The layout is undeniably cool. But there were two problems: 1) we knew the van wouldn’t be big enough for us in the long term 2) they’re reputation of being maintained hogs was not our idea of fun. The idea was/is less stress for travel and camping.
I recognize different people have different ideas, goals, budgets, so-on-and-so-forth. Rarely is there a perfect solution to anything in life. But when you find something that brings you joy, happiness, and shelter for you and whoever else, that’s pretty damn near perfect to me.