Back in November 2022, Ford unleashed the Transit Trail into the world. The manufacturer is capitalizing on the #vanlife movement by offering camper van builders a blank slate with much of the hard work already completed. The off-road van is also designed for OEMs, too, and we’re beginning to see what camper manufacturers are doing with the platform. The Thor Motor Coach Talavera promises off-road camping adventures “for those who want to experience travel without limitations.” Even better, it’s cheaper than its Mercedes-Benz Sprinter-based rival. But, you will want to do a few upgrades before going too far off of the beaten path.
The RV industry is witnessing a cooldown in sales numbers. During the pandemic, Americans changed the way they vacation. As resorts closed and cruise ships were floating petri dishes, people went out and bought RVs in record numbers. Demand was so high that RV manufacturers struggled to crank out campers fast enough. Of course, some of the units that came out of the other side weren’t shining beacons of quality, either.
Now, the party appears to be coming to an end as demand is reeling back to fewer units than were sold before the pandemic. Still, some segments of the industry are currently showing more strength than others. The RVIA’s data suggests that customers are still opting for Class C and Class B motorhomes and camper vans. More people have purchased camper vans than truck campers and tent campers combined. So, it makes sense for Ford and Thor to offer a platform like this.
The Transit Trail
Before we get to the camper itself, let’s talk about the platform it’s riding on. The Ford Transit Trail has been on sale in the United Kingdom since 2020. Out there, the Transit Trail is a rugged, more off-road capable variant of the famed Transit van. Ford brought the same concept over to America and through its Ford Pro division, turned the Transit Trail into a good starting point for an RV conversion.
On the exterior, the Transit Trail stands out from a regular Transit with bulky, butch fender flares, an aggressive grille, and a bumper that at first glance, looks like it’s ready to tackle difficult terrain.
The Transit Trail comes equipped with exclusive 16-inch alloy wheels painted black. These wheels are wider with a different offset, resulting in a 2.75-inch-wider track over a base Transit. The wheels are then wrapped in 30.5-inch Goodyear Wrangler Workhorse all-terrain tires. Ford says that these tires have a 2.5-inch larger diameter than standard Transit tires. The tire package is complemented with a 2.25-inch suspension lift with a reinforced unibody and a new steering column.
Add it all up and you get 6.7 inches of ground clearance at the Transit Trail’s lowest point. Approach angle is 19.5 degrees, Departure is 25.3 degrees, and Breakover is 19.3 degrees. Power comes from a 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 making 310 HP and 400 lb-ft torque, which puts those ponies down to all four wheels through a 10-speed automatic transmission. Sadly, there are no lockers here, but you do get a limited-slip differential in the rear.
Inside, Ford Pro did most of the hard work in converting a van. The Transit Trail comes standard with two 12V batteries. One battery is your starting battery while the other is your camper conversion’s house battery. It also comes with a 400W inverter, 4G LTE connectivity, and a 12-inch infotainment screen on the dashboard. Ford Pro also wires up an electrical system for you which routes through a panel under the passenger seat. That’s where you’ll find a 110V outlet and fuses for the electrical components you build into the camper space. Ford Pro then tosses an auxiliary switch panel for accessories and upfits as well as an option for a 250-Amp alternator.
The factory camper bits continue with front seats that swivel and an option to have a roof fan installed at the factory. That way, the van’s builder or upfitter doesn’t have to hold their breath and cut a hole in the van’s roof.
All of this was designed around the idea of making DIY conversions easier. Ford Pro installed an electrical box for you and you don’t have to worry about cutting a hole for a fan or an air-conditioner. At the Transit Trail press event, Ford showed off an upfit by Vandoit, a builder of modular camper van conversions. Ford says there are literally hundreds of upfitters who can take your Transit Trail and build it into whatever you want it to be.
But, if you aren’t interested in something like that, large camper builders like Thor Motor Coach are also taking the Transit Trail and turning it into camper vans. Thor took me for a tour of its Talavera, the Transit Trail-based Class B camper van intended for adventure.
The Thor Talavera
Camper manufacturers have been getting into the OEM off-road camper game recently. Winnebago has the Sprinter-based 4×4 Revel and the Winnebago + Adventure Wagon, Thor has the Mercedes-based Tranquility and the Sanctuary while Pleasure-Way has its Mercedes-based Rekon 4×4. One name that’s been doing off-road camper van conversions for a while, Sportsmobile, will be happy to make you a Ford or Mercedes-based 4×4 camper van. You can find plenty of smaller brands getting in on the action as well.
The Thor Talavera is a fresh face in the Thor Motor Coach lineup, joining the Palladium as one of two Ford Transit Trail-based Thor Class B vans. Both were introduced on September 25 during the Indiana RV Open House. When I asked Thor to show me its latest and greatest coach, its representative took me for a tour of the Talavera. It’s an example of what a large company with a lot of resources could do with Ford’s Transit Trail platform. The Talavera is 19 feet, 8 inches long, 10 feet, 2 inches tall, and has a GVWR of 9,500 pounds.
The floorplan Thor Motor Coach had on hand was the Talavera 1910, which features a bathroom nestled up on the rear doors, an expanding sleeper sofa in the middle, and a kitchen situated across from the sofa. The other floorplan is the 1920, which is a more typical camper van configuration with a bed in the back, a small bathroom in the middle, and a tiny dinette behind the front seats. Sadly, 1920 model was not available for me to view.
Personally, I love the 1910’s floorplan of having the bathroom in the back. You can park yourself up next to a lake, pop those rear doors open, and enjoy reading the Morning Dump while you do your morning dump taking in that fresh air. Just, make sure you aren’t revealing yourself to other campers.
I also like the arrangement of having a big sofa rather than a tiny dinette. I’m not a small person, so I often have to squeeze into the dinettes of other camper vans. That is not a problem here.
I like to feel up camper interiors and the touchpoints in this one felt better quality than the more expensive Winnebago 4×4 Revel. It also seems like a designer actually thought about how things would look before plopping them down into the interior. To see what I mean, check out the inside of the Winnebago. It sort of seems like the bench was just placed there:
Thor offers up a few variations on interior colors, but they all largely look the same with white and a dash of wood here and there.
In terms of equipment, Thor substitutes the 12V house battery for a Re(Li)able Power Pack Electrical System, which consists of a 400Ah lithium battery, a 3,000W pure sine inverter, a 170-amp alternator, and a system that automatically starts the engine when the battery runs low. Other camping equipment includes a Truma Combi Eco LP-based furnace and water heater, an 11,000 BTU air-conditioner, a 200W solar panel, a plug for more solar power, and a Winegard Connect cellular/Wi-Fi/TV antenna.
Additional equipment comes in the form of a microwave, a portable Bluetooth speaker, a single-burner induction cooktop, a power awning, and a 3,500-pound tow hitch. Sadly, the toilet is of the 5-gallon “shitcase” variety but there are heated tanks for the 22-gallon fresh water tank and the 20-gallon gray water tank.
Taking It For An Off-Road Adventure
Thor’s advertising markets the Talavera as the sort of camper van you take when you want to go where there are no roads. To help the Talavera at its off-road mission, Thor’s designers made sure that the camper’s equipment didn’t hang super low under the chassis. For example, the sewer hose sits on the running boards. Only the sewer connection hangs low.
Most of the buyers of the Talavera probably won’t be taking this van on terrain much harder than a fire road. But if you do decide to do something a bit more hardcore, there are two things you should be aware of.
Thor left the off-roading bits of the Transit Trail untouched. That means your running boards look like rock sliders, but they aren’t real sliders. And the skid plate? Well, if you thought Subaru was bad for a metal skid plate riveted to plastic, the Transit Trail doesn’t even try doing that. The van’s skid plate is a piece of plastic that Ford’s engineers have told me is mounted to more plastic. So, don’t try digging that front end in too deep. The van also lacks recovery points. So, again, definitely have fun, but don’t have too much fun.
Thor has priced the Talavera competitively with its Mercedes-Benz Sprinter-based rivals. The Talavera’s $178,500 base price is slightly cheaper than Thor’s own $180,460 Sprinter-based off-road vans, slightly cheaper than the $182,000 Pleasure-Way Rekon 4×4, and a whole heaping cheaper than the $210,293 Winnebago Revel. I also like that the interior of this van is better than the more expensive Winnebago.
Of course, $178,500 is still very expensive; I bet you could buy multiple Detroit homes for that. But if you have the kind of cash for a van like this, I think you’ll probably like it as much as I did. Just, be sure to toss out that plastic skid plate for something a bit more beefy.
(Images: Author)
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Question for the camping folks:
If your only sleeping option in a rig like this is to convert the couch every night, do you just sleep on the cushions sans sheets? Or do you make a bed every day? Making a bed daily would suck and sleeping on (largely) unwashable cushions gets gross.
My van has the Westfalia-style folding bed with space behind when in couch mode. We would have a mattress cover with the sheets and pillows for sleeping, but in day mode we would just roll all that behind the couch.
I don’t see that option in a van like this.
re: the 1910’s layout with the bathroom open to rear doors.
i’d expect opening those doors post-dump to be effective at de-stinkifying the bathroom….even if it’s raining.
I would like to request a poll set up for camping preference. Now I assume anyone that can afford a $175,000 van for camping is making bank in a city where everything is expensive. IE a 3 bedroom home with a detached garage with a shop and on the river costs more than $75,000. Now I also suppose they love the money the city etc despite the fact a full sized van is considered big enough. Now if you are tharmt family wouldn’t a vacation house 5 times larger than your city cell be a better vacation destination?
Depends on your needs and expectations. My spouse and I do not want a cabin to own or rent. We want to visit and camp in new-to-us locations and on BLM land where the nearest neighbor is 20 miles away.
Other people want a four-star experience at a luxury resort. Fine for them, but not us.
I agree but if you want 20 miles away you have the $178,000 van and a fee for middle of nowhere. In my area for $178,000 you can buy 750 000 acres.
Seven and a half hundred thousand acres?
I have a sportsmobile. When we lived in Colorado going out to BLM land camping was a blast (though we were never more than a couple miles from someone) and we would use it for tailgating. Never ever used it as any other type of vacation lodging. Now that I live on some land I can’t imagine why I would want to camp anywhere, and when I travel I certainly don’t want to sleep in my van.
Anyone wanna buy an Econoline RB50 Sportsmobile?
instead of a vacation house, I think one could be better served by a camp trailer. You can still take it places, but you can separate the tow vehicle and you can get a small camper and tow vehicle for a lot less than this. Sure, it has some drawbacks, especially if you don’t have experience towing or have limited space, but the savings can certainly help solve some problems.
But I’m more of a tent camper, so I’m probably missing something here.
People mock my being a tent camper and not a trailer or rooftop tent camper because they do not want to sleep on the ground. They shut up when they look into my tent, that I can stand in, and see the cot, chair, and table I have in there. And ALL of that cost less than $350.
$175,000 is a LOT of hotel rooms, Airbnb rentals, and a very nice tent/cot/awning campsite set up for when roughing it. I know some people are dead set on sleeping on their own sheets and using their own toilet but $175,000 for something that will need constant maintenance and leak all the time. NOPE is my vote. I would not want land or a cabin. Traveling to the same place all the time is boring and not meeting different people in different places makes one conservative and parochial.
I still say a closet sized van you can barely move around with with poor amenities for over $150,000 is monumental ignorance to a decent sized cabin/house on the river with 1200 or more square feet for $40,000. Or buy 3 and use $30 for upgrades and sell for a profit when tired of it. Don’t get me wrong it might be fun to pretend you have been kidnapped, trapped in a closet with your family that fights in larger abodes just once. But quit pretending a minivan is big enough for a family to live in for more than 8 hours.
That’s a lot of money for a cargo van, and glad to see that Ford did a terrible job with the “Trail” package that starts at $65kish.
They didn’t do something about those low hanging rear shock mounts, they didn’t do skid plates, and they could have easily taken the e-locker from the F-150 that is already designed for the 9.75 sterling axle that is in the transit as well.
Good job Ford
I don’t know why these prices continue to shock me. Given the price of those LIV trailers from the other day, I think I’d much rather deal with a trailer and have a nicer living space and separate vehicle.
I’m sure I’m not the target demographic, though.
Presumably the #1 selling RV brand in Sports-World. 😉
I’ve never really understood the popularity of the class B. They’re generally the most expensive option (at least at the entry level, I realize the price ceiling for a class A is effectively unlimited), and for that you get almost no interior space and a shitcase toilet. I suppose they’re a little easier to drive, but they’re still large vehicles. A fully outfitted class B isn’t exactly stealthy either with its roof-mounted AC and awning. If you park this in a neighborhood you’re not going to fool anyone into believing you’re there working on the neighbor’s plumbing. 🙂
I guess everyone wants in on the van-life craze though so until that dies down these will continue to be popular.
I dunno man, I’m more fond of Class B than Class C. The latter might be bigger, but the whole thing is basically a thin plastic and particleboard shed on wheels. At least the Class B is made of a van from the front to the back.
And both are better than low-end, non bus chassis based Class A’s where the ENTIRE thing is a thin plastic and particleboard shed.
Every RV is a collection of compromises.
Some people and their use cases are best served by an A class. Same for B- and C-class RVs. I’ve owned an A, a C, a travel trailer, and now a B class. Our Sprinter serves our needs right now and for the foreseeable future. I can see returning to an A or C at some point in the future.
The aftermarket is full of rugged bumpers and mounting points for boxes and spare tires, which a $178K vehicle should have. A 400 Ah battery isn’t going to run the roof AC very long, and I hope the engine auto-start has a shut-off at ~1/4 fuel tank or thereabouts.
Wonder about the range on this build. Hard-core vanlifers need range, and messing with Rotopax cans — as nice as they are — become drudgery to use often. I’m guessing 400 miles.
My wife is interested in one simply because you can just park it in a parking spot for events she goes to where she is there all day. A place to relax and use your own toilet would be nice. Certainly the other RVs offer much more space for often less money with slideouts and custom fiberglass enclosures.
But man these are expensive. I was looking at one of the Mercedes based diesels, also almost $200k. Oof. Not really any space to put a dog travel kennel either, which is probably the deal breaker.
Something this big should come with recovery points even if it was designed to just stay on paved roads.
But why do that when we can just totally half ass it?
I flashed to Matt’s face saying, “This doesn’t have any recovery points” again upon reading that sentence; he so enjoys putting soft shackles around A-arms after digging a hole in the sand to wriggle under there
I have put soft shackles around A-arms after digging a hole in the mud and grass to wriggle under there and there was no enjoyment there at all.