Happy Holidays 

What a year it has been!

A brief round up of key achievements from us in 2022 and what to look forward to in 2023…

Being sensible…

You may have noticed that we didn’t do a big van/truck trip as a family this year and make a film about it. We know you all love those and while we would have loved to have done one we had to for once do the sensible thing and look at what the financial forecast was for 2022 back at the start of the year. We knew the bank interest rates were about to go up, energy and fuel prices etc, so we knuckled down to pay the rest of our house mortgage off before this happened so the future interest rates wouldn’t really hit us and we could get back to more van and truck trips in the future without the financial strain of high mortgage rates to worry about. We are pretty much there now with that so we are now free to have long trips away once more and bring you the adventure videos that you like to watch in 2023 and the long term.

New website….

Not going away for a couple of months on the pre mentioned trip we usually do every summer gave us the chance to rebuild our website. The old one served us well for 12 years! but it was bursting at the seams with data so we needed to sort that out before it exploded and we wouldn’t be able to get any of it back. It was a mammoth task but the new site is way better in both new content and product availability. Talking about product availability we invested in a lot of new stock and have added over 6000 new items all with good stock levels that I think we worked out to be over 200,000 actual new van part items in stock ready to ship world wide! Due to our buy in volume increase we were able to look at our retail prices and offer even better pricing to customers and can not really think now why anyone would need to go anywhere else but CampervanCulture.com for your van parts and adventure travel equipment. Keep checking in on the new website for new video and blog content in 2023.

The Trips we did manage…..

2022 wasn’t a total travel film making drought for us, we actually managed to make two trip videos and these would prove to be the highlight of 2022. First up was a trans USA road trip of over 3000 miles in seven days from New York to California.

Covid travel restrictions were lifted so the decision was made to do something we have been talking about since we were last allowed to attend Syncrofest in California USA back in 2019 before the global pandemic was even a thing. Chris and I have been talking a bit on video messenger about how epic it would be to drive from his place in New York State to California and end the trip at Syncrofest. Syncrofest is a Vanagon event that both of our companies have a hand in sponsoring every year so we really wanted to go again. We worked out the logistics of how this can be done but we had no idea of the drama that lay in front of us. The plan was to rent a minivan and stay in that most of the time and bring a tent to put up when we could. This is not how things worked out and ended up being snowed in mid way for 2 days.. We did find a new found fondness for cheap motel rooms and eventually got to sleep out under the stars in the end.

If that wasn’t cool enough later this year we flew into Vancouver, Canada to hang our with the guys at Vivid Vans and to attend the Dela-Syncro event. Jed was actually lent a Syncro Westy for a good chunk of the time spent there and was able to bring you some amazing content and inspirational info on how they do things out there.

The decision was made to fly over the Atlantic once more only this time to attend the DELA Syncro event in BC Canada. There was no real plan to this trip and it was just a case of seeing what happened once Jed got off the aeroplane. The one thing I did know was that Nathan the owner of Vivid Vans fame and friend of ours was going to pick Jed up from the airport so a good time was pretty much guaranteed. Jed was totally blown away by the kindness of the Canadian people and was even given a Westfalia Syncro Vanagon (VW T25 T3) to use for most of the time he was in Canada! For free…. It was our first time in Canada and we were totally blown away with how many people both at the event and just by the side of the road recognised Jed and came over to say hi and thank us for the good work we do here at CampervanCulture.com.

New for 2023…..

The main news is that the CampervanCulture.com Syncro Westy has now had all it’s welding done and a new engine put in with auxiliaries. We need to get up to Scotland to go and fetch that and bring it back to the CVC Hanger to paint it and build it all back up. We are going to get back to filming again with weekly video updates on how that goes. There is going to be a lot going on with that and many new things added that we have been working on.

The first big trip we should be doing next year is something special. A van trip to Baja no less! More info on that to follow as it unfolds as the hankering for fish tacos is strong.

New products… 2021 was all about setting things up with our own CVC produced products made in metal and our fabrication side of things. You have all seen our epic OEM style swing out wheel carriers, ladders and rough road products etc and they are proving very popular world wide. 2022 was getting the general vehicle parts section fully populated with pretty much anything you would ever need to keep your VW on the road. 2023 is going to be textile based as we have now invested in the means to produce pretty much anything we can think of from soft material. We have a lot coming through in 2023 regarding this side of things so stay tuned for that one.

Thank you for your amazing support throughout 2022 and for making us a part of your journey. We’re excited to get you geared up and introduce you to more awesome CampervanCulture.com content and tough products in 2023.

We wish you a happy and healthy Holiday Season!

Jed Lou & Isaac