Any help please :)

[Charlp]

Hello everyone,

I'm looking to buy my first campervan to travel around France in and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions. My price range is about 3500.00 and plan to spend the next year doing it up.
I have spotted an - 'Toyota Hiace Super GL Campervan 1997 4th generation - LH119 Chassis model' which I like the look of but I'm not sure if this is reliable. It is a Japanese import, 4 wheel drive, 2.8L, automatic and has done 82.340 miles. It's mot is up in September also.

any help big or small would be really appreciated. (Apologies for my lack of knowledge in the area )

 

[Dan and Jan]

To the fun I haven’t got a lot of experience of Toyota van, but they seem to be popular. If you took someone mechanically minded to look at the van side and you looked at the inside it may help.

 

[emjaiuk]

A four wheel drive if you don’t specifically need one is just something else to go wrong/maintain

 

[CamperManLez]

I suggest you check on being able to get insurance, grey imports can be problematic. Otherwise toyota‘s are usually good. Make sure the auto transmission is good as you may well have problems sorting out repairs on an old vehicle such as this.

 

[Vipar]

Greetings peeps welcome from West Kent
Wife cousin had one of those. She loved it. As said above do you really need a 4x4. Look around you only have one pot of money.
Good luck

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[2657]

My daughter has one the same year but not 4WD, she loves it but there will be running costs on an older vehicle, no problem with insurance but I don't know what she pays.

Try and find out who imported it and when, was it undersealed when imported, they are usually in good condition underneath as they don't use salt in Japan but can suffer from corrosion if they have been in the UK a while.

Here in Portugal those Toyota vans go on for years, very popular as pickups.

As others have said, get someone to check it out, if you can get one for£3500 you are doing well.

 

[XxAnthxX]

Charlp
I think I’ve also seen the one your talking about....With a wee fence in front of it.

During its time in Japan it will have been well maintained and looked after as their testing is far stricter than ours. Toyota’s are usually well robust.

I’ve had several grey imports and usually insurance isn’t too much of an issue, however be prepared to do a fair bit of homework...you need to find uk cars that shared parts with it.

I had a grey import Mitsubishi FTO and was quoted a kings ransom to order disks from a ‘specialist’. Turns out the local Partco store had them on the shelf at less than half the price for a Mitsubishi Gallant.

I would look for an import forum where there are users of this van for this...even if it is just a van and not a camper.

Depending on the importer it should have been under sealed when imported, as they don’t bother over there, if it isn’t done straight away it can lead to corrosion problems over here, so have the bottom checked.

With a bit of tlc and modernisation to make it yours the interior will be ok.

What I do see is it will be fairly heavy on fuel, being a 2.8 with permanent 4wd and possibly noisy transmission.

 

[ChrisL]

I use Sky insurance brokers for my grey import Mitsubishi, they also specialise in modified and performance vehicles so worth trying them for a quote.

https://www.skyinsurance.co.uk/

 

[tacr2man]

I have owned grey imports in past , here and in Australia ,I was in the motor trade as well , in view of age and build of the vehicle you are looking at I would look elsewhere . You will be better served looking at a home market 2wd , that will be newer and better value for the money . In the range of your budget you need to tread very carefully !