I thought I would take a little time and explain the Corolla Camper. We were trying to find the best way to go car camping wherever we wanted. We concluded that the best way would be to use the car. For a few trips we used the back seat air mattress and we still have it. On occasion if we use our other car we will still use the air mattress for the back seat. There is a short video walkthrough for you to view at the bottom of this page.
Removing the back seat of the Corolla
I started this off by removing pretty much everything from the rear of the car, well, seats.
Mobile electricity for car camping
You can see in one of the photos that there is a battery in the trunk but we wanted to use that space. It is a true deep cycle battery with an isolating relay to the alternator. It is now pretty well directly behind the passenger seat and under the sleeping platform. The battery is wired to a 1500 watt inverter for us to use at any time. We don’t feel the need to always use it but it is nice to know that in any situation we have a fair amount of electricity on hand. We can charge anything we want to, have lights, a fan in the car at night to move air and in the morning if we choose, we can plug in our coffee maker and just make coffee. It’s nice to have options.
Preparing the Corolla Camper to sleep in
After emptying the rear of the Corolla I then added a very simple wood deck. There is a very simple frame system below the sleeping platform. The front portion slides forward then secures using buckle clasps. The rear side that is in the trunk is hinged so it can be easily lifted to get to the spare tire as well as the storage space under it. I wasn’t going through the trouble of removing the seat latches from the car so we use a simple pool noodle to add some cushion if we bump it.
When we stop to setup camp it has become pretty quick to do. The Corolla Camper pretty much stay in this state so we can use it whenever we want.
How much space when sleeping in a car?
The bed basically has a bit of an hourglass shape to it but it is 53 inches wide and 75 inches long, this is a ton of sleeping space for us.
Staying out of the weather
We use screens on all four windows to make sure we have all the air flow we may need. The Corolla also has a moon roof so we screen that as well and open it. We had a small cover for that in case it rained but found we didn’t really need it or want to pack it. When it rains and we do not feel protected we simply roll up the windows if we feel it on us. If we have the trees around us and feel the need we will also simply hang a tarp over the entire car, gives us a small amount of shelter outside as well as allows us to keep everything open in a rain storm. What you see below is us trying these systems out.
