ONCE YOU POP, THE FUN DON’T STOP

Live Your Best Overlanding Life With This Pop-Top Camping Trailer

Overlanding, by nature, requires some compromises. Camping out of your vehicle far away from paved roads requires strategic packing and careful choice in what you bring; space and weight are at a premium. Indeed, that minimalist ethos is part of the charm: people head off-road to escape the shackles of regular life, to remember what matters — what they need and what they don’t.

Still, there’s an argument to be made for minimizing said overlanding compromises where you can. And it’s the sort of argument that Opus Camper is making pretty strongly with their OP 15 off-road trailer.

The hybrid caravan trailer may not be all that large — it’s just 15 feet long and seven feet wide, smaller than even an Airstream Bambi — but clever packaging means it crams most of the comforts of home into that space. An exterior kitchen setup that pops out of the trailer’s flank helps with that, offering up a stainless steel stove, sink and chopping board as well as a mighty Dometic CFX75 electric cooler that serves as both fridge and freezer.

In order to keep that icebox running cool (as well as run the rest of the electricals), the OP 15 packs a trio of 100 amp-hour batteries, connected to a 300-watt solar panel setup designed to convert the sun’s photons into handy-dandy electrons.

Inside, there’s a compact shower/toilet and a sink, connected to twin fresh water tanks holding a total of 63 gallons. A Truma heater and hot water system serves up toastiness to shower, sink and cabin, while a 13,500 BTU air conditioner keeps things cool if need be.

But odds are good you won’t need to use it much, not once you pop the roof up and let the air flow. Roof elevated, the trailer offers nearly six and a half feet of standing room, so even those campers in the 99th percentile of height should be able to stand proudly upright. And with the rear extension in play, the OP 15 offers a living space almost 18 feet long.

Up to four people can sleep inside, with a king-sized bed and a pair of bunks up for grabs. (The narrower of those is just a yard wide, so make sure you call dibs quickly when it’s time to divy up the beds.) There’s also a full-size wardrobe, a leatherette eating area and a TV, because hey, even the call of the wild can’t trump the call of Netflix sometimes.

But don’t let that fancy interior fool you into thinking this trailer is a poseur. The galvanized and welded stainless steel chassis is made to withstand the worst the world can dish out, while the trailing arm independent suspension and dual shock absorbers for each wheel help keep everything inside from getting jostled about too badly when you’re overlanding across the West.

With a curb weight of 4,960 pounds, the OP 15 can be towed by rigs like the Jeep Gladiator, the Toyota Tacoma or even the Lexus GX 460, though anyone planning on conquering truly steep trails with it might prefer something a tad beefier, like a Land Cruiser or the upcoming Ford F-250 Super Duty Tremor. Regardless of how you tow it, though, this Opus Camper trailer seems poised to add a bit of extra comfort to your off-roading adventures. And at a starting price of $45,000, it won’t break the bank doing it, either.