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Woman Turns her Honda Element into a Micro RV


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Right now I’m sharing how this woman turned her Honda Element vehicle into a Micro RV so she can go on a two month cross country trip throughout the United States and Canada.

Her name is Michelle Sevigny and she even found her dog, Lucy, in Nova Scotia while on the trip. In the video below you’ll get to see exactly how she set up her Honda Element and her little secrets learned and shared while camping and traveling with it.

Before she embarked on this adventure she considered an RV, VW Westfalia, and a travel trailer. But RVs were so expensive, the Westfalia’s were also expensive to maintain/repair, and hauling a travel trailer was just kind of out of the question. Plus, the cost of gas.

So her solution was to create a Tiny RV out of a 2005 Honda Element instead. And she did just that. It’s great on gas, easy to drive around in, and only a few minor modifications were required to make it all work.

She even works out of the van on her location independent business, Dogsafe Canine First Aid (www.dogsafe.ca). And she plans on continuing to save money to build her own tiny house on the west coast of Canada (British Columbia) soon.

Woman Turns Honda Element into her own Micro RV

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Images © Michelle Sevigny/YouTube

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Images © Michelle Sevigny/YouTube

Video: Michelle Shows You Her Honda Element Tiny RV Set Up

Resources

Our big thanks to Michelle Sevigny of DOGSAFE Canine First Aid for sharing her Honda Element Car/SUV Camper with us!

If you enjoyed this Honda Element Micro RV conversion you’ll absolutely LOVE our free daily tiny house newsletter with even more! Thank you!

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Alex

Alex is a contributor and editor for TinyHouseTalk.com and the always free Tiny House Newsletter. He has a passion for exploring and sharing tiny homes (from yurts and RVs to tiny cabins and cottages) and inspiring simple living stories. We invite you to send in your story and tiny home photos too so we can re-share and inspire others towards a simple life too. Thank you!
{ 12 comments… add one }
  • Lindy
    October 7, 2014, 4:25 pm

    My father was before his time. He built a panel truck into an amazing camper. We drove with SEVEN people halfway across the country in an old panel truck. Behind the front seats he put a bench seat, and behind that he built a platform with a double mattress on it. When you opened the back doors, there was a teensy kitchen with a stove and an icebox. A table folded down to eat on. We drove nonstop except for bathroom breaks and eating. Thanks for sparking the memories. 🙂 This Honda Element is great! I could see my younger self doing this.

    • Cahow
      October 7, 2014, 6:10 pm

      Lindy: my childhood memories are identical to yours!! My stepdad did the identical thing with a panel truck (including that wicked cool bench seat!) and the four of us traveled the entire USA in that truck. Like you, we’d only stop to use the loo (sometimes) and stock up on food. We’d sleep on the side of the road (it was okay, back then) and would try to stop at farmer’s road side stands when we traveled Down South. Excepting Hawaii and Alaska, by time I graduated from high school, we had visited all 48 states, at least twice, sometimes 4 times! (Montana was a favourite of ours!)

      This article brings a lot of fond memories to mind. Clever Girl. 😀

  • Lindy
    October 9, 2014, 11:03 am

    We didn’t travel a lot this way– it was my mom and dad, brother, aunt, and two cousins, and me. But they were some of the best memories. We basically went from California to Minnesota (my parents’ home state) and back. It would have been wonderful to see more of our country. I wish I had been more adventurous in my younger days– right now I’m feeling too old for that kind of adventure, but there’s a “maybe” lurking in there…. hopefully not just wishful thinking!!

  • Kristy
    October 14, 2014, 9:34 pm

    Very cool! Thanks for posting this! Last year I spent a month traveling cross country in a Ford Escape. I mostly slept in a tent as mine wasn’t set up nearly as nice as this. Planning to do it again in the future so this gives me lots of ideas.

  • Karen
    July 9, 2015, 3:56 pm

    This is very cool. Talk about ingenuity!

  • kent
    November 11, 2015, 4:31 pm

    The Element is great for this kind of modification. Here is a link to the camper we built for our Element:

    https://youtu.be/3rVNvteLmlA

    • Alex
      April 9, 2020, 8:18 pm

      Hey Kent, thanks for sharing that! Do you still have your Element camper these days?

  • Danielle DiLisio
    May 29, 2016, 7:42 pm

    Great set up! I’m looking to do this in my 2014 Kia Soul for camping to start to transition to tiny living.

    • Alex
      April 9, 2020, 8:21 pm

      Hi Danielle! Did you ever get your Kia Soul turned into a camper? Would love to hear about it.

      • DANIELLE DILISIO
        April 9, 2020, 8:56 pm

        Hi Alex! You know, I sure did and I would go on weekend camping trips with my dog. I have a twin sized inflatable bed that fit perfectly. I put my camping gear (stove, dishes, etc.) I’m the compartment that used to be for spare tires (Kia’s do not have them, they have an emergency inflation kit. Very compact and leaves you with all that room). Everything else for fine by the bed. My larger cooler went in the front. I used one of the shower tents for my camping toilet, and just showered at the campgrounds. I would get a tent site with electric so I could use a small fan, charge my phone & tablet. I loved it so much, I now have a 2020 Soul and will be doing it again this summer!

        • Alex
          April 9, 2020, 9:22 pm

          Hi Danielle! Thanks for the reply. So glad to hear that you did it and enjoyed it. Congrats on the new Soul. I can’t wait to hear about it. If you happen to have any photos that you want to share of your old Soul camping trips, I would love to see them and maybe get to share them as a new blog post (kind of like this one). Let me know! Or shoot us a message at [email protected] 🙂

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