For the last three years, Lee Porter and his team at JC Vans have been busy converting new wave Vans into go-anywhere, do-anything Campers. We catch up with them to see how things have changed in that time
Working as a fire fighter at a gold mine in the Sahara Desert, Lee Porter worked shifts – six weeks on, three weeks off. In one of those spells at home, he decided to convert his VW Van into a Camper. When he sold it and built another one, word started to spread amongst friends what a noteworthy job he was doing in the garage on the side of his house.
That’s when people started calling him to have basic jobs like windows and carpet lining done. Not long after that, fire fighting was but a distant memory and JC Vans was born, in an 800sq.ft workshop that could squeeze two Vans in.
Having learnt CAD in a previous job as a signwriter, and with an engineering background, Lee was well placed to broaden the range of services he offers and, a year and a half later, moved to new premises double the size. The company outgrew those in less than a year, and now JC Vans is sitting pretty in a lush, 5,500sq. ft workshop.
There’s a definite in-house spirit to JC that means paintwork is the only job the company farms out. Now a Pendle Performance agent, and with a MaHa rolling road on the way, things show no sign of slowing down on the south coast…
VWt: Hi Lee, how’s it going? It’s been a couple of months since we popped down, keeping busy we trust?
LP: Always busy James, always busy. Occasionally, the workshop seems to calm down and we see a bit of space in there, then the next day it’s full up again! I’m not complaining as we love to be busy, and it’s really good for business, but it would be nice to be able to stop and sweep the floor every so often.
As we now have larger premises, we have started to buy used, low mileage stock Campers to convert and sell on our forecourt. We are delivering one to Exeter on Friday and then will head straight up to Bridge water Van Centre to pick up a brand new one up on
This story is from the Issue 52 edition of VWt Magazine.
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This story is from the Issue 52 edition of VWt Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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