Photographer mobile

Anyone who has met me in the last ten years has usually found me in the vicinity of a Ducato motorhome. At first it was a rather worn-out Alkoven-Bürstner, which was also pictured here on the blog, but when I had some money left over, I replaced it with a new Carado with a particulate filter, which I could still drive off the motorway in the Ruhr area. (Retrofitting was not possible with the old Ducato).

Why a motorhome? Simple, I was travelling quite a lot with my photography and needed a car that would also fit all my film equipment. So a 5.99 metre motorhome, the smallest class, no alcove this time because I usually slept alone in it anyway. But with a 120 litre tank. As I had no intention of selling the car, I made sure that it was always in good technical condition. And then came 14 February and I wanted to drive from Rocksdorf to the customer in the morning to take promotional photos for a car wash. I had already told the customer that this was a strange idea at minus 16 degrees, but the customer is king… At minus 16 degrees and with the sun low in the sky, you have to polish the inside of the windscreen really well, otherwise you can’t see anything. So I stood at the side of the road and did that, and someone banged into the left rear of my car who thought that cleaning the windscreen was a waste of time. His “Seat” only came to a halt at the rear axle. You can’t see it on the motorhome, but it’s a total loss. Half the body has to be replaced. Buying a replacement is currently illusory, the camper van market is empty.

This is what it has become. A Renault Trafic. (Identical in construction to the Fiat Talento, the Nissan NV300 and the Opel Vivaro.) The bus has space for eight and a half people, which means I can now finally drive to the location with my seminar participants in one car – and we still have room in the boot. This is the long version. It has a few advantages over the camper van: you can get into normal parking spaces, you can get into multi-storey car parks, you can get through gates and subways, you need 40% less diesel and you no longer have to worry about ruts on the motorway.

The rear seat bench can be folded down, “wrapped” and removed, the centre seat bench can only be removed. But there should be two of you. With six people, you have an estimated 4 cubic metres of cargo space, which is enough for quite a lot, you can even load the 2.70 cardboard boxes. I built a folding bed system out of a few poplar plywood panels so that I can sleep in it while travelling (doesn’t happen that often anymore, but it does happen). Remove the centre bench seat, fold down the rear bench seat, fold out the bed, done. 2,10 x1.40.

The complete system – as long as it is not set up, it hardly takes up any space. The red bag contains chocks for levelling the car at the pitch. Of course, depending on what kind of mattress you take with you, it will take up a bit more space.

Why am I presenting this pile of metal here? When I picked up the car from the dealer in Parchim (Attention! If you want the same, take either the 145 or 175 engine and definitely the manual gearbox! Tip from the Renault diagnostics technician), he told me that I was the third photographer to have bought such a bus from him. Because you can get everything in it and, if necessary, you can also pop in a mattress.

This is a craftsman’s car. Lots of bare metal inside. Hard plastic. The floor is padded, but wipeable. (That’s why I put the poplar plywood in the bottom of the boot. It gives more grip than the floor underneath). But the technology is reliable, everything works as it should, cruise control and sat nav are on board and for less than 30k euros new, the box is good.

And because I was already there, I offset the production and the first 100,000 kilometres with atmosfair.

Do I regret the Carado? I can’t shower in the Trafic. I’ll survive.

By the way: the photos of the Trafic are from an E-1. That’s right. THE E-1. More on that in the next post