The Art Of Balance

Someone wise once said, “It’s 10% about what happens to you, and 90% how you react to it.” When Dan Fairbrother found out he was going to be a dad, his reaction was to take his Van along for the ride Words

-  Mark Walker

Picture the scene: you buy a nice T5 Panel Van to help with your mountain bike hobby, then life gets in the way. You can either roll with the punches and make the vehicle you bought evolve to keep up with your life, or sell it and move on.

For Dan, it was the latter course of action and his Van evolved not once, but twice, ending up with the tricked-out Camper you see here.

The first change to this 2014 Startline Panel Van happened when nature took its course and Dan’s wife, Becky, gave birth to their daughter, Luana. The arrival of child number one in their lives spelt the end of comfortable indoor transport for his mountain bikes, replaced by suddenly necessary things such as seats, seat belts and what these days appears to be universally referred to as a ‘travel system’. As such, the Panel Van evolved into a Kombi.

It was at this point Dan fell into the company of the wrong crowd, or Daz Smith to be precise. Regular readers will probably recognise the name, as Daz has built a few feature-worthy Vans of his own.

Daz egg Dan

Fired up with enthusiasm, Daz egged Dan on to have a go at taking his Kombi to the next level, evolving it yet again into a fully fledged Camper. At least that’s how the story goes from Dan’s perspective. Speaking with him he says he blames Daz 100% for this though, reading between the lines, I’m 100% convinced he’s delighted it happened.

The bog standard, white, 85bhp Panel Van may have not been the most exciting model to start the process with but it did have a couple of things going for it, in terms of being converted into a Camper – captain’s chairs and air conditioning. Not quite so bog standard then, after all.