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HILLSIDE HOPTON
Price from: £71,995
Berths: 2 Travel seats: 2
Base vehicle: MAN TGE
Length: 5.99m
Gross weight: 3,500kg
Five years ago, there wasn't a great deal of choice – apart from a bespoke build – if you wanted a campervan based on the Volkswagen Crafter, so Hillside was a bit of a trailblazer with the (front lounge, end washroom) Heatherton and, soon after, the much more successful (rear lounge) Hopton. But then came Covid and the world – and the world of motorhomes – changed forever.
As Fiat struggled to supply the leisure industry with anything close to the numbers of panel vans it wanted (to satisfy a seemingly insatiable demand), campervan manufacturers looked for other marques to convert – and many have cottoned on to the appeal of the big VW – and its twin sister from the same Polish production line, the MAN TGE.
In the past year, I've tested new MAN 'vans from Adria, Dormobile and WildAx, and others now building on the Crafter/TGE include 8 Ball Camper Conversions, CJL Leisure, Dirty Weekender, Globe-Traveller, IH, Knaus, Vanworx and Westfalia. Then, of course, there's Volkswagen's own Grand California (in two sizes). But the majority of these models
