After 7 years of travelling around Australia on/off in a 1986 Toyota Hiace, the dream was always to take a year off and do a full lap. However I didn’t want to do it alone, and conveniently in more recent years, I met someone!
Amy shared my excitement at doing a lap, however we quickly realised that in our 30s and with a lessening acceptance of cramped conditions, we would need a little bit more.. luxury for our lap of Australia vehicle.
However, we still wanted to stick to a budget (that blew out) and still wanted something a bit unique, as we definitely believe that you should smile when you get in and drive a car! Thus began the search.. and I went through ALL the motions when trying to find the ultimate lap of Australia vehicle.
Option 1: Toyota Troopcarrier (Hightop)
- Pros: Reliable, amazing 4WD capability, can almost stand-up, easy to fit-out due to being so popular, easy to repair
- Cons: Smaller than my van inside, hard to find a ‘good’ high-top one for our budget, would still need a lot of work to make ‘ours’, still have to setup bed each night
Ultimately we decided we wanted more space, so we started thinking, why not a caravan and tow vehicle?
Option B: Caravan and Tow-vehicle
- Pros: Allows us to park up a bit more permanently, way more space and comfort, can get something vintage, don’t have to setup/packup bed in most models
- Cons: Need a tow vehicle, way less agile (imagine a quick surf-check with a caravan in-tow), lots of fuel, a bit more that can go wrong
The cons outweighed the pros on us for that, so then we thought what about a more capable, larger 4WD?
Option C: Expedition Truck / 4X4 Sprinter
Pros: Lots of space, medium off-road capability, plenty of parts available
Cons: Price to buy, price to repair, price of parts (tyres), price of fuel..!
Anything decent in the above category we’re looking at $100,000.. before you start fitting it out and buying parts etc!
Basically, I gave up, and just continued to mindlessly scroll Facebook Marketplace, and I even joked to Amy “I’m just waiting for the mystical perfect vehicle to pop up, that I know doesn’t exist, but maybe it does”
Discovering the Toyota Camroad 4WD
Then.. the miracle. I saw a vehicle pop up that was 4WD, Toyota, and.. a mini motorhome? Enter the Toyota Camroad.
- Cons: Not that capable offroad, still a bit expensive, underpowered and slow.
- Pros: Toyota, 4WD, Heaps of space, but not a ‘huge’ vehicle, seperate bed/living area.
The more I researched these, the more they appealed, with one big con. They sit pretty low to the ground, and were all automatic, meaning not great offroad capability at all.
However, another miracle: I found a YouTube tour of one that was manual.. so.. there was proof they do exist! They seemed to only be manual in a very short age-range, around 1997-1999, and had push-button 4WD with manual locking hubs and low-range selector. This makes them WAY better for offroad.
Being manual also meant there was less power getting sucked from the automatic gearbox, somewhat making up for their lack of power. I researched whether to turbo or engine swap, but ultimately these options were deemed too expensive and sacrificed reliability. I figured I’d just try and do a ‘light-weight’ build to make up for the lack of power. But first, I had to find one to buy!
Tracking Down a Rare Manual Toyota Camroad 4WD
I searched high and low on the Japanese Auction sites, marketplace, and dealers.. and began desperately emailing dealers and importers to find me a manual one
Most ignored me.. except for one!
He said he actually had one sitting at his yard – it had come over from NZ via a work friend of his, to be sold in Australia, however was a bit rough inside and he hadn’t found the time to fix it up – PERFECT!
I drove up that weekend to check it out, we negotiated a price I was happy with, and BOOM! We had our ultimate lap of Australia Rig!
You can watch the full YouTube episode of our decision on our channel here
