There’s something special and meaningful about a family-run business where everyone gets involved, learns their skills and enables the organisation to grow and expand. This is particularly apparent when visiting a couple of workshops a few miles from Preston in Lancashire. They are home to Transporter Life and T4Life, the latter, started trading in 2008 and specialises in camper conversions. Proprietor and head of the family, Toby Stowe, admits he was always destined for a life with some sort of VW camper, his first being a 1972 Bay Window at the age of 29. Since then, he’s owned over 150 VWs, including air-cooled Beetles and Split Screens, several Golfs, Jettas and modern Beetles. Prior to establishing T4Life, he was a maintenance contractor for Safeway supermarket.
Nowadays, T4Life could perhaps do with changing its name because it rarely works on these models (although the name implies a Transporter for life)—there’s always at least one VW T5 or T6 in the workshop that’s undergoing a conversion, if not two or three. Customers’ vans are converted and vans are regularly bought and sold, so there’s clearly a steady demand and consequently a waiting list.
Denne historien er fra Issue 99-utgaven av VW Bus T4&5+.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Denne historien er fra Issue 99-utgaven av VW Bus T4&5+.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
The Evolution of Van
To mark 100 issues of VWBus, David takes a look back at how updating the humble ‘Box on Wheels’ has gone from concept to reality
Wild Times
Perhaps a sign of the wild times we’re in and a telling sign of how fast we’re adapting to the ‘new normal’. I decide to take a U-turn and zoom out on how things looked as that ‘new normal’ was taking hold, along with how that’s effecting our little sector
Story's Story
With The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden under our belts and barely two weeks on the road, we were heading to the ultimate van life destination; Norway…
Karmann-Go
When you own ‘The fastest motorhome in the world’,getting to the campsite on time shouldn’t be a problem
Gran Tourettesmo
This is a very cool and interesting project, but the question is,is this the ultimate eBay build?
CBBA
If there was such a thing as Cool Bus Builders Anonymous, then each meet in Leicestershire would start with the words. “Hello, my name’s Andy Stretton and I can’t stop building seriously cool buses.”
Honey I Shrunk My Bus
When Grant Gwyn walked into a VW dealership to buy a Viper green Caddy, little did he know his future was about to be very orange...
Milk Float Influence
Nicknamed Ernie, we discover this custom-created T5 pickup won’t be doing the early morning milk round any time soon
Impossible Solved
A while back we brought you a basic sketch of a proposed project, it was both wild and eminently practical. Well it’s finished now and already in service as a daily driver for a very special lad
An Alpine Summer
In the concluding instalment we pick up Richard and Jackie Pickles’ story of their eight-country Alpine summer adventure on the shore of Lake Como in Italy
