Since the dawn of the concept of the RV, the vast majority of campers have all suffered from the same problem: Most of them have terrible utilization rates. The vast majority of RVs are used a handful of times in good weather and then sit for the rest of the year. There was a time when RV manufacturers tried to fix this by marketing their motorhomes not just as recreational vehicles, but something you would drive to work, the grocery store, and to the football game. One of those vehicles was the Champion Trans-Van, and it was perhaps the apex of the camper as a daily driver concept.
If you were to buy a camper van today, you’ll find that most manufacturers will talk about the adventures you would go on or the memories you would create with your family. It’s not often you’ll find “daily driver” pitched as an official use case in the marketing copy. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen — here’s a camper van converter pitching just that — but it appears most companies have realized that there isn’t a huge market of people who want to replace their family crossover with a $200,000 van.
Back at the 2025 Florida RV SuperShow, representatives from Wingamm USA asked me if I thought their Oasi 540.1 motorhome would make a great daily driver. This isn’t a part of Wingamm’s marketing, but they were curious. After all, the Oasi 540.1 is shorter than a half-ton pickup truck, fits in regular parking spaces, and drives like a smaller van. I noted to the team that this idea, while sort of novel today, isn’t new.
There was a time when RV companies leaned into the idea of increasing RV utilization by marketing them as daily drivers. The Winnebago LeSharo is a famous example of this. The LeSharo was a touch over 19 feet long, drove like a car, had the features of a normal motorhome, and got 22 mpg. Winnebago marketed the mini motorhome as a grocery getter, family van, a tailgate vehicle, and a camper in one.
The LeSharo’s design even further bridged the gap between a typical motorhome and a van with its low floor and its front-wheel-drive layout.
These motorhomes were basically a stretching of an existing idea. Camper vans and groovy custom vans with some camper elements had already been a thing for a while and people were using those as daily drivers. Everyone was in that market from Volkswagen to Ford.
What these RV companies did was take the basic concept of these vans and evolve them into even more camping-friendly vehicles. How these RV companies did that was by starting with popular van cutaways and then they grafted tiny Class C-style RV bodies onto them, creating a type of RV that was bigger and better equipped than a regular camper van, but not nearly the size of an actual Class C.
The Champion Trans-Van was perhaps the peak of this experiment. It tried to be the ultimate van and the ultimate camper at the same time.
The Champion Trans-Van is often called the Dodge or Ford Trans-Van depending on the article you’re reading but it wasn’t the work of an automaker. Instead, it came from a brand that has now shown up quite a few times in the Mercedes RV Cinematic Universe.
That’s Champion Home Builders, the company that got its start in 1953 by constructing mobile homes. Champion is still around today and will sell you a pretty nice place to crash every night, but there was a time when the company was obsessed with trying to reinvent the RV industry. Champion entered into the RV space in the 1970s and its plan involved fixing one of the greatest problems with RVs. The people at Champion knew that stick-built units had terrible longevity, so a Champion travel trailer and a Champion motorhome would be built with strong steel skeletons like the company’s mobile homes were.
Now, Champion could have just built steel-framed campers and called it a day, but the company decided to correct as many deficiencies as it saw in existing RV design.
This has resulted in some weirdly awesome RVs getting punched out of the firm. Champion hated how Class C RVs looked like ugly growths bolted to the back of vans, so the company worked to give its early motorhomes smooth designs and smooth exterior paneling that blended into the bodywork of the donor vans.
In 1974, Champion believed there was a market for a vehicle that was a van, a toy hauler, and a weekend camper in one. The Handi-Van was created and just look at this thing. It looks like a bizarro world RV but it isn’t. It’s basically a van with the body of an RV:
This Frankenstein monster of a creation apparently sold well enough for Champion to fully build it out and slap a 4×4 system on it. The resulting Dodge Woodsman was marketed to the growing population of Americans who wanted to have 4×4 fun and go camping.
Later, Champion would take a crack at the often-reported complaint of Class A motorhomes being too tall, too ungainly, and too boring to drive. That resulted in the Ultrastar.
The 1970s were full of pretty awesome custom vans. Back then, the van was pretty much the ultimate expression of freedom and personality. Van owners plastered their rides in groovy graphics, glorious murals, and built out their interiors into small pleasure palaces. There was a custom van for everyone from the person who wanted to haul motorcycles to the person who wanted four-wheel-drive to conquer the trails. Champion was right there with them with the 4WD Wrangler, a Dodge B-series van with a beefy four-wheel-drive system.
Camper vans were also pretty popular during this time. Many of these vans had features like high fiberglass roofs or pop tops, beds, dinettes, and curtains. Some companies decided to take this even further. The Fleetwood Santana, famous for its appearance as Uncle Rico’s Van from Napoleon Dynamite, added the option of a toilet and a shower.
However, perhaps the most iconic camper van from the 1970s was the 1971 Chinook 18 Plus (above). This van was revolutionary because of Chinook’s genius application of fiberglass. By grafting a fiberglass body onto the back of a van cab, Chinooks achieved a level of style and interior room that other vans just couldn’t match.
While the fiberglass body alone was out of this world, Chinook went even further, giving its fans custom paint and decal work plus solid oak wood cabinetry. All of this was done in-house at the time with a level of quality so high that Chinook offered an industry exclusive lifetime guarantee to the first owners of a Chinook motorhome.
The Champion Trans-Van launched in 1977 and while it was technically a competitor of the Chinook, it couldn’t really match the Chinook in terms of interior volume. Instead, Champion decided to try something different and marketed the Trans-Van as a sort of second car.
According to Champion, a Trans-Van started life as a Ford, Dodge, or Chevrolet cutaway van. The van underneath had either a 351 cubic inch Ford V8, a 318 Chrysler V8 (a 360 V8 was optional), or a 350 cubic inch V8 from Ford. Then, the company added a steel cage to the rear of the van, draping it in fiberglass panels and a fiberglass roof. The interior was built out as a luxury motorhome. Standard, a Trans-Van came with a two-burner stove, a refrigerator, a sink, a marine toilet, a furnace, a 20-gallon holding tank, an automotive air-conditioner, a water heater, and a shower. Options include an RV air-conditioner, a 2.5kW generator, a trailer hitch, shore power, and more.
By all accounts, a Trans-Van was just a regular Class C motorhome, just scaled down to be about barely larger than the typical heavier-duty van of the era. Unfortunately, because the Trans-Van was on the smaller side, it meant having up to 20’3″ in body length but just 6′ of headroom.
Champion might have known that it was at a disadvantage when it came to headroom. While Champion marketed the Trans-Vans as being luxury motorhomes, the marketing copy also went to great lengths to explain how the Trans-Van’s small size meant it was great as a second car for a family. Brochures said anyone in the family could drive a Trans-Van and that hey, since it had a trailer hitch you could also use your Trans-Van like a truck and tow something with it.
This marketing strategy was great in theory. A Trans-Van had more than enough room to take your family shopping or to the football game. Yet, at the same time, all of the RV amenities made it great for people with active lifestyles. Does your kid need to use the bathroom? That’s not a big deal as boom, there’s a toilet on board. Want to have a sweet tailgating setup? A Trans-Van was perfect for that right from the jump. Want to go camping? Yep, it’s made for that! Yet, the Trans-Van was also sized just small enough to fit into common parking spaces.
Trans-Vans were offered in 17-, 19-, and 21-foot sizes and up to one-ton donor chassis. Since Champion was into the 4×4 market at the time, it was also possible to order one as a four-wheel-drive van-camper thing. Car and Driver noted that base prices ranged from $9,000 to $11,000. ($48,554 to $59,344 today, respectively.)
A Dodge B300 was worth about $4,888 in 1977 ($26,370 today), so turning one into a Trans-Van about doubled the price.
As silly as a concept the Trans-Van appeared to be, Champion managed to build them from 1977 to 1991. Unfortunately, I could not find any period reviews or any data about numbers produced. What I can tell you is that these vans are sort of rare to find in the modern day. What’s worse is that when you do find them, they often have structures that are still solid but everything else attached is beaten down and worn out.
The very few minty examples left can sometimes sell for around $20,000, but the majority of the rest seem to be worth well under $10,000.
So then, I’ve ended up back to where I started with the question posed by the Wingamm folks. Would an RV sitting between the lines of Class B and Class C work as a daily driver? It seems that enough people bought these Trans-Vans to keep them in production for 14 years, so I would say the answer is a resounding “maybe.”
Pitching one of these chunky in-betweener rigs as a daily driver has been tried out numerous times throughout RV history. Yet, none of these marketing strategies have ever survived long enough to become a mainstream idea. Part of that might be the price. Is it worth spending two times or more than the value of a base van to be able to get a toilet and a shower? At the same time, when you’re not camping or tailgating you would have to haul all of the camper stuff around for the ride.
I’m not sure. But what I can tell you is that RVs like the Chinook and the Trans-Van have helped paved the way for today’s modern tiny motorhomes. If you’re looking for a groovy van from the 1970s and don’t want the same thing all of the other vintage van fans are going after, maybe try looking for a Trans-Van.
Weirdly, a couple of these have popped up on Facebook Market Place recently. A Chevy that looks like the above but in need of an interior for $8,000, and a Dodge in the same colors as the cutaway Dodge, also in need of an interior, for $4,350.
Both prices seem optimistic.
My high school industrial arts teacher had a ’77-ish Dodge TransVan. We used to make fun of it because of how weird and dated it was by the late 80s, and it was well used and had some bullet holes in it too. He used to take us to official student field trips in it, with no seatbelts or anything, which was totally fine… He definitely used it as a second and third car. I’m pretty sure its camping days were in the distant past…
Isn’t there is an executive order banning these from the US? Or do we just have to call it a van now? Sigh
If nothing else, *I* thought the TransVan was cool when I was a kid. It was so sleek compared to other RVs. One of the teachers at my middle school had one, and I thought that was cooler than the Camaro Z28 that was driven by another teacher.
This is a good day tripper with the ability to cook at a rest stop. The other driver could stretch out in the back. If needed you have emergency bathroom. I would not want to camp in that thing.
I still occasionally see Trans Vans around in SoCal. As someone fascinated with car donor lights being used on motorhomes, Trans Vans were particularly interesting to me because they used tail lights from a late ’70s Pontiac Bonneville.
https://www.guyswithrides.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/5597AE4F-9933-49B7-A890-FFE2A7039B68.jpeg
In the era of the conversion van, these were probably the ultimate expression of that.
My sister had an early 90’s VW Vanagon Westfalia with the pop-up roof as their second vehicle up until last year. The did the camping thing with their 3 kids, but also used it as the family hauler/van. I think that’s probably the last great camper that can be used as an everyday vehicle, except you make a lot of sacrifices on the camping side, like a bathroom and a rooftop AC unit. Much better than a tent though.
Where would the old Road Trek wide body vans fit in the taxonomy? These took a van, typically Dodge, and widened the body behind the cab area so it still looked like a van rather than a normal Class C.
The non-wide body Road Treks are almost the same thing, you get a bathroom and kitchen in something that really isn’t any bigger than a normal Ram van in terms of footprint
In the era, Class B RVs like this existed because neither Ford nor Chrysler offered an off-the-shelf van that a person could stand up in. Now that Ford and Stellantis *do* offer “standable” vans, the idea has become somewhat moot.
“The 1970s were full of pretty awesome custom vans. Back then, the van was pretty much the ultimate expression of freedom and personality.”
And that kids is how grandma and grandpa got herpes.
Personally I think the ultimate daily driver RV would be fairly small, basically just enough room for a shower, toilet, and a bed, which if properly designed I believe it could fit fairly easily into much smaller vans than you think.
Also this reminds me: Why don’t we have pop top roofs for showers in RVs? When you’re sitting on the toilet in a wet bath you don’t need the headroom, you only need it when showering, so why not just make the roof pop up for just the shower section when you need to shower? Better yet make the top of the pop up fabric mesh so that you get passive ventilation, more natural light, and you can see out the shower while you shower while keeping your private bits hidden.
I took music lessons in middle school from someone who used a LeSharo as a family car, big family, like 7 kids. They had a Cutlass Supreme as a regular car and used the camper when they were going somewhere as an entire family, both street parked in front of their rowhouse (which was deceptively bigger than it looked, narrow facade but was really deep, believe it was a total of 6 bedrooms)
Re: the Ultrastar’s “You should see us now!”
Of course we can see you: you’re sitting behind an 80sqft windshield. Better bring the sunscreen. 😮
Also at first glance I thought the people in the topshot were tossing a conch shell around, which seemed like an odd thing to do but things were odd back then.
Forget the sunscreen, for the love of God make it a privacy screen.
Some things can’t be unseen!
Should the last engine listed be a Chevy?
Great article!
D’oh! I’ll have that fixed. Yes, that’s a Chevy!
In the early 1980s we had conversion vans. We just wanted around inside of the them seatbelted.
Some things are just ahead of their time. That shag brow plaid interior is giving me 70s shivers.