Harry Kombi started with a leaky roof, a stubborn air-cooled engine, and a simple belief: a Kombi should be lived in, not polished. What began as a weekend project in a Cape Town driveway grew into a community of owners who share honest build notes, real campsite reviews, and the occasional roadside repair story. This is where we keep the story straight.
A few milestones from the early days of tinkering to the community hub it is now. No corporate timeline, just the moments that actually mattered.
2016
A tired 1978 Bay Window bought from a farmer near Stellenbosch. The first build was a plywood bed platform and a curtain rail from a hardware shop. It leaked, it smelled of petrol, and we drove it to the Cederberg anyway.
2018
After a year of running everything off a jump pack, we fitted a small auxiliary battery, a basic fuse box, and two LED strips. The wiring diagram was drawn on a serviette and later turned into the first guide we shared online.
2020
Started as a way to share honest campsite notes and gravel road tips with a handful of friends. The first posts covered the Garden Route, the Overberg, and a very honest review of a campsite with a broken geyser.
2022
Someone sent in photos of a Syncro they had converted in a carport in Durban. That post got more replies than anything we had written ourselves, so we made reader submissions a permanent part of the site.
2024
Trip prep checklists and detailed conversion walkthroughs became the backbone of the site. The focus shifted from showing off polished builds to helping people finish their own, one honest weekend at a time.
What started as a single tired Kombi and a notebook full of sketches grew into a community for people who actually sleep in their vans. Here are the moments that shaped the project.
2016
A 1978 Bay Window bought for next to nothing, with more rust than floorpan. The plan was simple: make it reliable enough for a weekend trip to the Cederberg. We learned more in that first year than any manual could teach, mostly by breaking things on a Friday and fixing them by Sunday night.
2018
After a friend asked for photos of our electrical setup, we posted a rough walkthrough with hand-drawn diagrams. The response was immediate. People wanted honest details, not polished showpieces. That post became the template for everything we do now.
2020
Readers started sending in their own rig stories, from a Syncro that crossed the Sani Pass to a budget camper built in a single garage. We began publishing them, unedited where possible. The site stopped being a solo project and became a shared space for Kombi owners across the country.
2023
We started testing weekend routes along the Cape and Garden Route, noting which campsites actually have hot water and which gravel roads are best avoided after rain. These guides now include downloadable checklists, so you can plan a trip without scrolling through forums for hours.
Harry Kombi is still run by the same small crew that started it. We own three Kombis between us, none of them showroom condition. We test every route we publish, and we only recommend products we have used on our own builds. The goal has not changed: help you get out there and sleep in your Kombi, without turning it into a museum piece.