Built by people who actually use them.
Onyx Vans is a three-person team in West Sussex. We build adventure vans on the MAN TGE platform, and we’ve put serious thought into every decision — because we’d rather spend our time driving these vans than explaining why we cut corners on them.
It started with a van we weren’t supposed to keep
In 2020, Chris bought an old Ford Transit ex-race van during lockdown and converted it into a camper. Not a professional job — a first attempt, the kind you learn everything from. They used it, loved it, and eventually sold it privately to fund an engagement ring. That should have been the end of it, but the conversion had confirmed something Chris had wanted to do since graduating from his industrial design degree: build things that are well made and useful, for people who care about quality as much as he does.
Over the following years he and Heather built more vans — experimenting with layouts, platforms, and systems, working out what actually works and what just sounds good on paper — until the Summit took shape. It wasn’t designed in an afternoon. It came from building a lot of vans, driving them, listening to the people who bought them, and gradually stripping away everything that wasn’t necessary.
The people who build your van
Chris
Chris studied industrial design and spent his early career at Masters, a Kent-based company specialising in exhibition vans and trade stands. It gave him a rigorous understanding of how to turn a brief into something real — how materials behave, how spaces work, how details either hold up or let you down.
Outside of the workshop he rows, runs, cycles, and mountain bikes. He led outdoor trips to the Pyrenees, Morocco, and Corsica when he worked in education, and that experience — the kit, the logistics, the understanding of what people actually need when they’re out — shapes everything he builds.
Heather
Heather grew up in the United States, came to the UK, and co-founded Onyx with Chris — which means she was there for the early builds, the experiments that didn’t work, and the years of iteration that produced our models as they exist today. She handles the electrical installations and runs the business, and her standards for both are the same.
She runs, cycles, and hikes, and her own experience of planning trips in the outdoors informs how the vans are designed from the inside out. The things that matter to someone spending a week in the hills — reliable power, good systems, a space that actually works — are the things she makes sure every van delivers.
Ryan
Ryan grew up on a farm in New Zealand, which means he’s been fixing, building, and problem-solving with his hands since he was old enough to be useful. He raced professionally as a cyclist before joining Onyx, and the combination of that precision and his practical upbringing shows in his work.
He has an exceptional eye for detail and an intolerance for anything that isn’t done properly. When something isn’t right, he’ll find it — and he won’t sign off on a van until it is.
Zelda
Zelda is a Eurasier and the only one of us here every single day without fail. She supervises from a sunny patch of the workshop floor, greets everyone who visits, and takes her under-van inspections very seriously.
Where the vans are built
The workshop sits on a farm in West Sussex — 2,400 square feet split across a main build space, a CNC room, and an office where we meet with clients and plan builds. It’s a proper facility, set up specifically for the kind of conversion work we do rather than adapted from something else.
The fabrication work — the roof rack, the bed frame, the aluminium overheads — is designed entirely in-house and made by a local fabricator to our own specification. That matters because the components are built around the van rather than chosen from a catalogue, and because working closely with the same fabricator means we can iterate quickly when something needs refining.
Why we build on the MAN TGE
When we were working out which platform to build on, we spent a long time driving different vans and understanding how they were made. The MAN TGE isn’t the most famous choice — most people arrive expecting a Sprinter — but it’s the right one for what we build.
It drives better than you’d expect from a van this size. The build quality is excellent throughout. And the aftercare from MAN is good — dealers who know the vehicle and can support owners properly, wherever they are in the country.
It’s comparable to the Sprinter in most respects and available at a slightly lower base price, which means more of your budget goes into the conversion rather than the base vehicle. And unlike the Crafter, the long-term support network is there when you need it.
We’ve tried other platforms. We kept coming back to this one.
How we work
We’ve spent years working out which materials and systems are worth specifying and which ones aren’t. We use Victron electrical systems and Aquahot heating because they work reliably, year after year, in conditions that test equipment properly. When something lets a customer down in the field, it’s frustrating for everyone — and it’s avoidable if you choose the right components in the first place. We stopped compromising on materials a long time ago.
Every van goes through the same process: designed carefully, built properly, checked thoroughly. The people designing your van are involved in building it, and the people building it will be answering questions about it for years afterwards. That connection matters to us, and it shows in the result.
Come and see us
If you’re seriously considering a build, we’d encourage you to come to the workshop. You can see how the vans are made, meet the people who’ll build yours, and get a proper feel for which of our vans is the right one for your trips. Most people find that seeing one in person resolves questions that no amount of reading quite answers.
A discovery call is the natural first step — a relaxed 30 minutes to talk through what you’re looking for and whether we’re the right fit. There’s no obligation and no sales pressure. We’d rather have an honest conversation early than a difficult one later.