This Fun $15,000 Teardrop Camper Is So Lightweight You Can Tow It With Almost Any Car

Each year, countless Americans drive home in crossovers of all shapes and largely monochrome colors. Others buy one of the increasing numbers of EVs out there. Regardless of what you drive, there are a lot of vehicles that are unable tow behemoth trailers, if you can even afford one. Thankfully, the options for cheap camping continue to open up. Vistabule has launched its latest trailer, the DayTripper, and it’s a 900-pound $14,995 minimalist teardrop solution for people who want something better than a tent.

It’s no secret that RVs are expensive purchases. My parents spent $62,800 on a gargantuan 37-foot 7,746-pound trailer and as I’ve written about before, it was broken from the factory and continues to be broken today. Some commentators like attorney Steve Lehto advise against buying a new RV because of the kinds of nightmares my parents are experiencing. I wouldn’t go as far as to say you should never buy new, but it pays to research what units are worth a look and the ones you should run far and fast from.

Another route is just buying a camper so simple that there’s not much to go wrong. That’s what Vistabule wants to offer with the DayTripper. It’s a 900-pound teardrop trailer that’s so minimalist that it doesn’t even have any doors. Ok, it has one, but it’s a hatch.

Airy Teardrops

Vistabule is just one of many manufacturers building lightweight teardrop trailers. While it’s not a name with a lot of history, it’s not exactly a fresh startup that sprouted out of the blue.

Vistabule was founded by Bert Taylor and his brother Dave. In the years before the founding of Vistabule, Taylor built handcrafted furniture in Minneapolis. Over a decade ago, a friend told Taylor to Google “teardrop campers” and he was hooked from that moment on. As the Twin Cities Pioneer writes, Taylor had been a fan of vintage trailers like Airstreams and figured that as he aged, he’d feel more comfortable in a trailer than in a tent on the ground. But he also didn’t want a giant RV. Taylor quickly found himself disappointed. Teardrop trailers back then, much like many are today, do not give their occupants an expansive view of the world outside. Many small teardrop owners are lucky if they get more than the small windows on the doors of their units. Taylor compared those trailers to being in a cave.

Taylor took his first handbuilt trailer to the Grand Canyon and after it proved to be a fun little camper, he rallied his family together to put the trailer into production. The very first Vistabule was sold through a Craiglist ad.

Taylor has been selling the Vistabule ever since and reportedly, customers love the trailers for its use of glass to create an airy cabin. They also like how the trailer has a front and rear window large enough so that the driver of the tow vehicle can see through the trailer.

Vistabules look like fantastic teardrops, but they also come with a price to match their design. The flagship Vistabule trailer starts at $23,995, which places it into the luxury end of this niche. Taylor, like many camper builders, has decided to cut the price, drop the weight, and build trailers for a cheaper end of the market. That brings us to the DayTripper.

Yes, Like The Beatles Song

Minnesota Teardrop Trailers, the company doing business as Vistabule, published a press release that gets right to the point. Bert Taylor is a fan of the Beatles, and he drew inspiration from the band’s catalog for his next trailer. The DayTripper trailer isn’t just a light camping option, but an homage to the Beatles and their song Day Tripper.

Despite the link to the band from Liverpool, the DayTripper trailer is still supposed to be a nod to the American teardrop trailers of decades past. It’s also built to cater to a younger generation of campers, people who may not have 24 grand to put into an RV or may not even own a vehicle large enough to tow a typical travel trailer. Or, maybe you own an EV, where trailers larger than a teardrop just kill your range. Either way, smaller campers are in right now and Taylor designed the new Vistabule DayTripper for those people.

Each Vistabule DayTripper starts as an aluminum frame with a torsion axle. On top of it is a box made out of handcrafted wood. The exterior of the trailer features 1 mm thick painted aluminum. It’s a simple design and isn’t an all-metal bear-spraying off-road rig, but it should be fine as a little trailer to pull behind your Subaru.

A regular Vistabule is 14 feet long with a 10-foot box. To create the DayTripper, Taylor and his team deleted the galley that is found on the Vistabule. This results in an 8-foot box and a 12-foot total length. It’s also partly responsible for the weight loss from 1,420 pounds empty to 900 pounds empty.

As I noted above, the chopped-off length came from the removal of the galley. This means the trailer’s interior didn’t get any smaller. Vistabule indicates that the DayTripper isn’t just a smaller Vistabule, either. The company says that the removal of the galley allowed the team to make the interior of the DayTripper bigger than the Vistabule. The DayTripper is the same 58.5 inches wide, but stretches to 92 inches long compared to the Vistabule’s 78-inch long interior. The interior height is also 44 inches, or an inch taller than a Vistabule’s interior. The company says if you’re 6’4″ or taller, the DayTripper will be better for you than a Vistabule.

The biggest change, aside from deleting the galley, is how you enter and exit the DayTripper. Most teardrop trailers are entered through side doors. Those doors have been deleted here and your entry point is the hatch, which would normally reveal a kitchen. This hatch still features a window, which will allow you to see through the trailer, depending on your tow vehicle.

You don’t get much in terms of features. You get a handcrafted wood interior, LED lighting, a two-way MaxxFan ceiling fan, a bed, and some storage spaces, and that’s about it. Vistabule mentions shore power connectivity and a hookup for solar panels, but you’re on your own for a Jackery, EcoFlow, Goal Zero, or similar power station for off-grid power. The trailer is minimalist in every sense of the word.

If you want to cook something, heat or cool yourself, shower, use the bathroom, or have any entertainment, all of that is on you. The company figures you’ll either use the trailer as its name implies, a trailer for a day trip, or that you already have the gear you’ll want to bring:

A DayTripperer (hmm…not quite there yet) is someone who has all of the camping gear they need—the camp stove, the camp chairs, the water canisters, etc. They don’t need a kitchen galley, they don’t need a fresh water system, or a working sofa (all great things, but they all come at a premium, both in terms of cost and space). They want a comfy, safe place to lay their head, and the freedom to decide how they want to do the rest. It’s a tabula rasa, a blank slate.

Obviously, this trailer is not for the kind of person who wants their camper to provide them with a shower, at least, not in its base form. For now, options include eye hooks for anchoring a dog leash, a hitch table, and a tent room that deploys from the hatch. Vistabule indicates that the trailer has only just soft launched and a proper options list, as well as a configurator, will be coming soon. With that said, I would not expect to get a DayTripper right away. Vistabule currently quotes a four-month lead time just for the flagship model.

If you’re interested, the DayTripper carries a starting price of $14,995. That price makes this trailer a bit more expensive than those rock-bottom $13,000 Coleman trailers I wrote about earlier this year. Those Colemans are also fully equipped. At the same time, those Colemans are aggressively cheap, and I’d be willing to bet these teardrops would last long. Either way, I love that Vistabule is giving consumers another choice for an affordable camper. I’m always in favor of more lower-cost options.

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