I need a vehicle that nobody makes:

2 front seats, ideally swivelling to rear facing.
3 individually sliding and reclining rear seats. Ideally about 1m+ of fore/aft adjustment so that kids can be separated, have max leg room or empty seats pushed right forwards to maximise load space without removing seats.
Fittings / space for table between front and rear seats.
Space for bikes
Sliding side doors and rear tailgate.
Fairly compact outside

Moon on a stick, or has someone built similar?

That amount of adjustment in the rear seats AND leaving boot space, you aren’t going to get anything ‘fairly compact’.

Vito probably can do most of that, but unsure about moving rear seats…in fact most vans probably offer a fair chunk of that, but all will be lost on the ‘fairly compact’ bit.

By fairly compact, i mean swb rather than lwb van! I appreciate its gonna be a van!

Caravelle might work for you. I generally just have the 3 seat bench in and leave the 2 middle captains seats at home. Obviously doesn’t give you 3 individually sliding seats but I believe you can spec it with 4 captains instead of 2 + bench.

What you’ve described is pretty much what I’m after, but I want a unit of some sort, with a hob & cool box.
I keep looking st vans, but I’d like the seating from my Galaxy in it. 5 single seat units, that can go in a multitude of combinations. Suppose you could pick up a cheap Galaxy for its rear seats & all the floor mounts.

If you can afford it, a Transporter Kombi might be a good shout. You can spec it with captain seats in the front, not sure about the swivelling aspect; possibly something you’d have to source yourself. I know the sliding rear seats are available aftermarket.
A friend I do some work for has this setup bar the sliding rear seats and I’ll vouch for it being a great choice. After 4 hours driving, you get out of the van feeling fresh. Automatic box and cruise control probably helps a bit with that…

Look up a company called crystal custom campers there’s a post on their page showing a Van with he captain seats and the sliding rear seats granted they are a unit rather than separate.

Stock wise a Kombi, or crew can van is a good shout, youlll need to drop the front wheel out of your bike to transport it in a SWB but otherwise it’s a huge estate car!

Would a lwb transporter not be worth the compromise in compactness for the extra room inside? It works out to be about the same length as something like a Ford Galaxy with a hitch mounted multibike rack on.

You can spec a caravelle with 4 x single rear seats, that will give you what you want but pricey. All seats will slide and recline individually, the front 2 back seats swivel, and the fronts can be swivels. I don’t know if you get all that without getting the specced up version though. And you’ve got 2 rows, so need to remove 1 row for max space.

A t6 kombi can be ordered with 3 single rear seats which recline etc individually, but they don’t slide. You could retro fit a t6 3 seat set into another t5/6 with a sliding rail system if you got creative. Google it, if it can be done it will have been. The seats are about £1000 on eBay.

California Beach and hunt for single seats.

Have a look at the big Japanese market MPVs – there’s quite a few in the country now and more coming in all the time.

Google:

Toyota Alphard
Nissan Elgrand
Honda Elysion

They’re all petrol (which may or may not be an issue for you – they’re a lot cheaper than a Caravelle so that buys a lot of fuel), usually 8 seater and with rear seats that flip up sideways so full vertical height for bikes, etc. All with sliding doors (usually electric) and tailgates. And built as a luxury MPV from the ground up, not a builders van.

Smaller in size and engines but still pretty big and useful:

Honda Stepwagon
Toyota Noah/Voxy
Nissan Serena

To add – this shows the Alphard seating configurations:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9PLozANtpQ[/video]

No swivelling fronts from the factory, but there are a few firms doing camper conversions on these now that put in swivel bases for the front seats.

My t4 does almost exactly that.

2 front seats, both swivel.
1 middle seat thats easily removed and has a table next to it.
3 seat bench in rear which folds down.
custom built parcel shelf/storage unit in rear which makes a bed platform when rear bench is folded down.
Pop up kitchen pod that goes up after middle seat is removed.

One of these?

Pretty sure a Eurovan 2 (Citreon C8 / Peugeot 807/ Fiat Ulysse) covers all those bases.

Nae luck.

And built as a luxury MPV from the ground up,

with repair costs to match,

Check out unwin rail systems. They’ll give you the adjustment you want. Find the right seats and you’ll get the reclining bit too.
Swivels aren’t standard on front seats but can be bought and fitted easily.
3 bikes for whole in a swb Transporter Kombi when set diagonally.

We’ve just got a brand new T6. We could have got swivelling seats (but didn’t as we wanted height adjustment). We have a row of sliding individual rear seat (unwin style). We have space for bikes fully built including a 20″ 29″ Surly Ogre behind the rear row straight, not diagonally. What we don’t have is fittings for a table, but something could be engineered if we had the swivelling front seats.

It is LWB though. Essentially we bought a T6 van with side windows for the very front and the mid-van and had the rear seats added by a coachworks including lining etc, it was due to needing it to be registered as a commercial here in France, as we could have got the same from VW only the seats would not have slid and it would have been a private use.

Bizarrely it’s cheaper to insure than our Berlingo which we traded up from…

Once you’ve gone Transporter size it’s only a hop to LWB and so much more worth it if you have children/ need the rear seats.

I’m after exactly the same as the OP, but have a double cab transit custom to use as the starting vehicle.

Any recommendations for firms that could help? I’m particularly stuck on finding swivel seats that don’t need a lot of bodging to get in…

with repair costs to match,

Not really from what I’ve seen (based on the Alphard anyway). They can be a little harder on some components as you’d expect in a bigger heavier vehicle but nothing too bad. Lots is shared with the big Toyota & Lexus saloons and SUVs so parts are easy enough to get and not badly priced.

Outside of consumables like brakes, suspension bits, etc the rest is an unstressed simple petrol engine mated to a conventional auto. Not great for mpg but reliable.

I am just finishing off my own van (MWB Movano) which is similar to what you describe, but mine is more of a dayvan / camper and the bike go on a rear rack. I have just fitted a pair of Tourneo Custom seat to mine and can highly recommend them. Back rests fold down, partially recline, the seats fold forward of can be removed completely.

[/url]P1040441 by motorman2013, on Flickr[/img]

[/url]P1040438 by motorman2013, on Flickr[/img]

bookmarked to read later

Motorman those Tourneo seats look great. Do you have photos of the rest of your conversion?

You could consider a Mercedes Viano (Vito passenger vehicle), of which the ‘Long’ version (middle of the 3 lengths) can be found with twin sliders, tailgate, various seat combinations including individual seats on factory rails and a folding table on rails.

I have a Vito of the same length and it is a little shorter than a LWB T5 and no problem to park. I’m about to fit swivels to the front seats.

IainAhh, it is not quite finished but here are some pics.

[/url]P1040445 by motorman2013, on Flickr[/img]

[/url]P1040442 by motorman2013, on Flickr[/img][url=https://flic.kr/p/VADaWM]

I’m after exactly the same as the OP, but have a double cab transit custom to use as the starting vehicle.

Any recommendations for firms that could help? I’m particularly stuck on finding swivel seats that don’t need a lot of bodging to get in…

Ford garage in Stirling had a Transit camper conversion on display with the nicest front seat swivels I’ve tried. Rock solid when facing forwards and very slimline – better than the Sportcraft swivels I had in my previous T5. Salesperson thought they came from either Scot Seat in Fenwick (http://scotseats.co.uk/) or directly from Wellhouse (who do the Transit Terriers). I’m still months away from delivery of our Transit DCIV so haven’t investigated further yet, but fill yer boots and report back if you have any success.

I started with the plan of creating our own van with pretty much the same spec here, but compromising with a Transit Custom double-cab-in-van specced with single front seats and a tailgate. Planning to add swivels. Unsure how I’ll tackle the idea of a table yet – thinking along the lines of floor bracket/receiver with a single-legged table. Bulkheld means no reclining of the rear seats but we’ll live with that for the benefits of keeping the bikes completely separate from passengers.

Cheers a11y – will check them out 🙂

Those Tourneo seats look ace – great solution to having comfortable safe seats for rear passengers that also get out of the way when not needed.

motorman – Member

IainAhh, it is not quite finished but here are some pics.

That’s a very nice job.

Nice conversion, good job. I’m curious, can you fit the seats in the slots the other way round? i.e. 180o. I assume they can be lifted out if you wanted to.

The Tourneo seats can be lifted completely out but sadly they cant be fitted the other way round with the standard floor mounts, but think these could be modified to make them work. As I will be regularly taking the seats in and out, I opted for two single seats rather than a double because they are pretty heavy lumps for one person to handle.

I forgot to mention earlier, inspiration can be found here for Tourneo build options as they are very adaptable.