This Clever New Composite Camper Has A Sliding Kitchen And A Wild Variable Interior, But It’ll Cost You

Much of the innovation in the RV world right now is centered around new interior layouts, putting off-road tires on vans, and putting an EV drivetrain in a trailer. SylvanSport is among a handful trying to turn the traditional travel trailer on its head. In production right now is the SylvanSport Vast, a camper with a wild variable interior concept, a kitchen on rails, and composite construction. It looks like a useful unit, but the price might be a tough pill for some.

For the most part, travel trailers tend to have very similar designs. Take a steel frame, plant a wood-framed and fiberglass-skinned box on it, toss some equipment inside, then call it a day. Ok, there’s a lot more to building a camper than that, but whether you buy a Heartland travel trailer or something from Forest River, you’ll often get about the same thing. When I attended the Indiana RV Open House this year, representatives from multiple brands told me their innovations weren’t in technology or build materials, but in new colors for cabinets, or layout changes such as a bathroom in the middle.

Thankfully, this isn’t the state of the entire industry and as you’ve perhaps read several times here, some brands like to try out things the big guys don’t. One of those brands is SylvanSport. Most of SylvanSport’s camping equipment consists of ground tents, mattresses, sleeping bags, gear trailers, and a couple of tent trailers. The Vast is a travel trailer that’s an entirely new product for SylvanSport, and there are some neat ideas at work here.

From Campers To Tents

SylvanSport says it was founded by Tom Dempsey in 2004 in North Carolina. According to the RV Industry Association, Dempsey is a lifelong fan of industrial design and the outdoors. It makes sense, then, that he got into working with camping gear right out of college. The RVIA says he started his career at Coleman, where he learned a lot about outdoor gear as well as campers. While there, Dempsey worked on Coleman’s pop-up camper design.

Later, Dempsey would leave the embrace of Coleman and RVs to get into the kayak business. In the 1990s, Dempsey was the Vice President of Perception Kayaks. Then in 2000, he created his own kayak company called Liquid Logic, a brand that’s still around today, though, not under Dempsey’s control. Merging his two career paths into one, Dempsey created SylvanSport to serve outdoorsy adventure types and campers alike. Dempsey says he made SylvanSport for one reason, and it’s “to make outdoor adventure accessible.” Dempsey has also said: “We want to turn the Prius into a pickup truck.”

When Dempsey started SylvanSport, he had an idea to take that old Coleman pop-up camper and make it into something far better for adventurers. The Brevard NewsBeat interviewed Dempsey, and he explained what he thought was wrong with that old and now long-discontinued pop-up camper:

“I thought, this is a product I would never use and my friends would never use,” he said. “I thought it was ludicrous to haul your living room recreated with cheap materials out into the forest.”

Indeed, dragging a large pop-up camper into the forest isn’t ideal. At the same time, Dempsey didn’t really see a better option out there. His solution was to take the basic pop-up tent camper design and optimize it for adventurers. SylvanSport’s trailer would be small, lightweight, built out of strong materials, and could carry your gear wherever you decided to drag the trailer. At the same time, Dempsey didn’t want his trailer to just be a kayak and mountain bike-hauling camper. It also needed to be versatile enough to be a regular cargo trailer when you aren’t going on an adventure.

All of these desires led to the design and the release of the SylvanSport Go in 2007 (that’s it in the photo above). The tiny, 700-pound trailer got rave reviews, but SylvanSport reportedly found few people willing to pony up the $8,000 for example. It didn’t help that the economy went right into the gutter and a versatile tent trailer was too much of a luxury for many. Despite this, SylvanSport survived losing its early investors and the Great Recession. Eventually, the idea of a tiny utilitarian camping trailer caught on and SylvanSport has been growing ever since.

The SylvanSport Vast

This history makes the emergence of the Vast sort of weird. SylvanSport was founded on the idea of making the outdoors accessible with a camper that basically any vehicle could haul into the wilderness. With the Vast, SylvanSport is now building a large, expensive camper that isn’t as nimble as the little Go.

The Vast was in development for around five years and over 50,000 miles of testing. The trailer, which marks SylvanSport’s first hard-sided camper and first traditional travel trailer, was first displayed at the RVX industry show in 2019. Like other SylvanSport products, the Vast tries to be multiple vehicles in one. It’s a camper, but it’s also a toy hauler. It has the typical RV amenities, but they’re designed to be flexible so the trailer could fill multiple needs. The trailer has finally gone into production in recent months, which means you can buy one right now.

At the heart of the Vast is its body and frame. The shell of the body consists of composite skin laminated onto an insulated wall structure. This sits on an aluminum frame. A plastic box sits just behind the tongue. The composite caps are doubled up in an effort to ensure greater durability.

The camper’s first party trick is revealed when you pop open the rear hatch. When the rear of the trailer is in camping mode, you can enjoy the “Versalounger.” By day, it’s a convertible sofa that works its way around a folding table. By night, the Versalounger turns into a queen bed and it’s joined by another queen bed that lowers from the ceiling. The lower bed also moves forward so that the rear of the trailer turns into an open deck with tie-downs for anything you might want to haul inside.

Moving forward, the front of the trailer also has some funky business going on. There’s a tiny bathroom up front featuring a sink and a 4.75-gallon cassette toilet. Next to it is your kitchen. SylvanSport decided to put the kitchen on rails so that you could have either an indoor or an outdoor kitchen with ease. Having an outdoor kitchen is as easy as deploying the kitchen unit and letting it slide outside. A lot of campers have indoor and outdoor kitchens, some have static kitchens separated from the outside by a door or a window. A kitchen that slides inside and outside is something I haven’t seen before.

When this kitchen is in its outdoor position, the interior is still sealed off from the outside and now, the bathroom becomes large enough to use the shower. Sadly, you cannot use the shower when the kitchen unit is in the indoor position, which is a bummer.

Another neat trick includes the huge side window, which SylvanSport says is the largest thermoformed piece in the industry. It swings open to allow the outdoors to come on. On the left side of the trailer is a gear rack designed to carry stuff you don’t want inside, such as a pair of kayaks. Finally, you get a 14-foot electric awning that can close itself in high winds.

In terms of kitchen equipment, you’re getting a two-burner stove, a stainless steel sink, a Truma 69-liter refrigerator/freezer, a microwave, and a flip-up prep surface. Heat and hot water come from a Truma Combi Eco 10L system, and a low-profile Dometic 11,000 BTU air-conditioner keeps you cooler on those hot days.

Other equipment includes 800 watts of solar panels, an outdoor shower, and a 15-cubic-foot lockable storage compartment behind the tongue. In terms of tanks, you get a 30-gallon fresh water tank and 32-gallon grey water tank. As mentioned before, the toilet is a 4.75-gallon cassette unit.

A Couple Of Caveats

The trailer measures 21.6 feet long and just under 8 feet wide. The box is 15 feet, 4 inches. Empty, the camper weighs 4,420 pounds, so it could still be towed by some crossovers. Unfortunately, the trailer’s payload is just 580 pounds. That means you can carry toys, but they probably shouldn’t be heavy things such as motorcycles, dirt bikes, or ATVs. Remember, any water or gear you carry takes away from that 580-pound figure. A full water tank would eat up 240 pounds by itself.

The price of the SylvanSport Vast is also a tough one. At $69,995, I’m not sure it meets SylvanSport’s mission of making the outdoors more accessible. The price is also notable as the original projected price was closer to $50,000.

I like a lot of what SylvanSport has done here. A transformable camper is one that should serve its owner well into the future. I also like how the trailer isn’t a plywood box that’s just asking for water leaks, but time will tell if the trailer is as durable as it sounds. I also love that sliding kitchen, but it’s unfortunate that having the kitchen unit indoors means you cannot take a shower. That would make cold weather camping a bit awkward. Still, I like when RV manufacturers try something different rather than building the same thing for eternity, and this green trailer is definitely different.

Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.