Our fleet sleeps people on the roof. Six Suzuki Jimnys and a Ford Ranger, each with a roof top tent, plus an electric CamperBuzz — and after several seasons of watching what works in October and what stops working in January, we are building something different: a canopy camper on a pickup.
This article is what we learned deciding on it. What a canopy camper actually is, how it compares with the three other ways of sleeping on a vehicle, what it changes on the road, the one number that decides whether a build works at all, and where the Greek rules sit. The build itself is not finished, so nothing here is a product announcement — it is the reasoning, published while it is still fresh.
What a canopy camper is
A canopy camper is a hardshell pod that replaces the cover over a pickup's bed. Inside it there is a sleeping platform and storage; on top of it there is usually a roof that lifts, either as a pop-up with canvas sides or as a hinged wedge. Most designs open through to the cab, so you climb in from inside rather than from outside in the rain.
The category was largely defined by Alu-Cab, a Cape Town company that has been building aluminium 4×4 equipment since 2000, with its Canopy Camper. Its newer ModCAP line splits the idea in two: you buy the aluminium canopy first and add the camper module later, which is a materially different proposition for anyone who wants to spread the cost. Alu-Cab's published European prices in August 2026 ran from about €15,330 to €20,260 for a Canopy Camper, with the modular ModCAP starting lower. Those are the distributor's list figures at the time of writing, not a quote — specification, fitting and shipping all move them.
A plain canopy is a different thing. A steel or aluminium hardtop — an RSI SmartCap, a Carryboy, an Aeroklas — is a lockable dry box on the bed and nothing more. It has no lifting roof and no bed. It is a good platform to build on and it is where a lot of people start, but on its own it is a lid.
The four ways to sleep on a 4×4
Almost every conversation about this ends up being a choice between four things. They are not ranked — they solve different problems, and which one is right depends on how many nights you spend out, in what weather, and whether the vehicle has a day job.
| Roof top tent | Canopy camper | Slide-in / demountable | Campervan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A tent on roof bars, on the cab roof or on top of a canopy | A hardshell pod replacing the bed cover, with a lifting roof | A self-contained cabin lowered into the bed on its own jacks | A panel van converted inside |
| Typical weight | Around 60–90 kg | Alu-Cab publishes about 80 kg for a double-cab ModCAP base and about 140 kg for the camper module | Several hundred kg — usually the binding constraint | Not applicable |
| Height | Low when closed | Roughly cab height when closed | Tall even closed; cab-over models much taller | Van height, permanently |
| Sides | Canvas | Hard sides, canvas only on the lifting section | Hard sides throughout | Hard sides throughout |
| Setup | Deploy and pack down each time | Lift the roof; the bed stays made | Nothing to deploy | Nothing to deploy |
| Vehicle still usable for work? | Yes, fully — the bed stays open | Mostly — you lose the open bed, keep towing and gain a dry lockable space | Not while it is fitted | No |
| Removable | In minutes | Bolted; removable but a workshop job | Designed to come off on its jacks | Never |
| Sleeps | 2 | 2 | 2–4 | 2–4 |
Roof top tent
The lightest option, the cheapest, and the one that changes the vehicle least. It is what we rent today and it is why our Jimnys can still be small cars the rest of the time. The trade-offs are canvas sides in wind, a deploy-and-pack cycle every night and morning, and the fact that you climb down a ladder in the dark.
Thinking about which one suits your trip? We rent the roof top tent version today, and we are happy to talk through the other three without selling you anything. See what we run, or send us your dates on WhatsApp at +30 6988 766 204.
Canopy camper
Hard sides, an insulated shell, a bed that stays made, and internal access from the cab on most designs. The bed of the truck becomes a small dry room with a sleeping platform above the wheel arches. You give up the open bed and you add roughly 200–250 kg once the camper module is on.
Slide-in, or demountable
The older and larger industry — Tischer in Germany, Nordstar in Sweden, AZAR4 in Poland, Four Wheel Campers in the United States. You get a cab-over bed, often a toilet and a heater, and you can lift the whole thing off in your yard and have your pickup back. What you pay for that is weight, height and the way the vehicle drives with several hundred kilos sitting high over the rear axle.
Campervan
The most living space per euro and the least capable off the tarmac. A van is a room you can drive; it is not a vehicle you take down a washed-out forest road to a beach. That distinction is the whole reason our fleet is what it is.
What a canopy camper changes on the road
These are the differences we expect to matter, based on renting roof top tents through five off-seasons rather than on a brochure.
Weather stops deciding the night. A canvas tent in a February gale on an exposed headland is a bad night, and a wet tent that has to be packed at eight in the morning is a worse one. Hard sides and a bed that folds away dry change what is possible between November and March — which is the window our off-season guides are written around.
Setup time goes to almost nothing. Lift the roof and the bed is made. It sounds like a small thing until you have arrived somewhere at 17:30 in December, in the dark, in rain.
The load stays dry and locked. An open pickup bed is a security problem and a weather problem. A hard pod is neither, and it holds recovery gear, a fridge and wet kit without any of it going into the cabin.
The pickup stays a pickup. This is the part that matters for anyone thinking beyond holidays. A canopy camper does not take away towing capacity and does not turn the vehicle into something that only makes sense on a trip. You lose the open bed. You keep the truck.
The shoulder seasons get longer. An insulated shell with a diesel heater is a different proposition in Zagori in January than a tent is. That is not a claim about comfort so much as about how many weeks of the year the vehicle is usable at all.
The number that decides it: payload
This is the part almost nobody writes about, and it is the first thing we checked.
A mid-size pickup — Hilux, Ranger, D-Max, Navara, L200 — typically has a maximum authorised mass somewhere around 2,900 to 3,200 kg. A category B driving licence covers up to 3,500 kg; above that you are into C1. So there looks to be headroom. Then you start adding.
A camper pod of roughly 200–250 kg. Two adults, call it 160 kg. A full tank. Sixty litres of water is 60 kg. A fridge, a second battery, recovery gear, tools, a spare, an awning, food for a week, and whatever else ends up in the drawers. It adds up faster than people expect, and the vehicle's own kerb weight has already used most of the allowance before any of it goes on.
The binding constraint on this kind of build is almost never the driving licence category and almost never the engine. It is the plated payload. Any serious build starts with the specific vehicle's plate, the axle limits, and a weighbridge ticket — not with a catalogue. We will publish the actual weights for ours when it exists, because a real number from a real weighbridge is more useful than any of this.
Where the Greek rules sit — and where they do not
Checked August 2026. Greek vehicle regulation in this area moves, and practice varies between one Περιφέρεια — regional authority — and the next, so treat this as orientation and confirm before you commit money.
A cover is not a conversion. Fitting a plain hardtop or a tonneau cover to a pickup bed is ordinary trade practice and, in the general run of things, does not appear on the άδεια κυκλοφορίας, the vehicle's registration document. We could not source that to any ministry document, so it is trade practice rather than something we can point at a law for. The line we would draw is this: once the structure carries a bed, a habitation door, windows, gas or a raising roof, you have stopped fitting a cover.
At that point it is a μετατροπή — a formal conversion. The governing instrument is Υ.Α. 80255/4693/19/2020 (ΦΕΚ Β′ 61/21-01-2020), which covers first registration, transfer and conversion of special-purpose vehicles by the transport directorates of the Περιφερειακές Ενότητες. Its article 7 requires a study filed by a qualified engineer: a technical report, drawings, axle-by-axle weight distribution, a weighing, strength calculations, welding certification to EN 15609 and welder certification to EN 287. Article 5 requires a current ΚΤΕΟ certificate — the periodic technical inspection — with no serious defects.
The motorhome definition is stricter than people assume, and looser in one respect. Under Regulation (EU) 2018/858, body code SA requires, as a minimum, seats and a table, sleeping accommodation, cooking facilities and storage, all rigidly fixed to the living compartment — the table may be removable. There is no standing-height requirement anywhere in that definition, so a pop-up roof is not needed to satisfy it, and a pop-up roof does not on its own create a motorhome. But SA is defined as a vehicle of category M, and a pickup is category N. Registering a converted pickup as a motorhome is therefore a change of category, not only a change of bodywork, and that is what makes it an expensive question rather than a paperwork question. There are tax consequences on the customs side that belong to a τελωνείο, a customs office, rather than to a transport directorate.
What we could not establish. We found no ministry text that either permits or forbids reclassifying an N1 pickup as SA, and no published fee or timeline for the article 7 procedure. Whether a demountable pod is acceptable at all is not addressed anywhere we could find; a bolted, non-removable pod is the more straightforward case. Anyone planning this should speak to the Directorate of Vehicle Technology at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport on +30 210 65 08520, to the technical inspection directorate on +30 213 13 08531, and to an engineer on the relevant register before spending anything.
What we are building
The base vehicle is a pickup, and the two platforms with a real installed base in Greece are the Toyota Hilux and the Ford Ranger — between them roughly 60 % of the 1,601 pickups registered in the country in the first half of 2021, the most recent model-level Greek breakdown we could find. They are also the two the canopy makers fit as standard. We already run a Ranger Wildtrak, which makes the choice straightforward.
The specification we are working towards: a hardshell canopy with a lifting roof, internal access from the cab, a sleeping platform, a drawer system underneath, a fridge slide, a second battery with solar, and water. No toilet and no shower — that is where a build stops being a canopy camper and starts being a demountable.
We are not announcing a date, because the vehicle is not finished and the regulatory questions above are not all answered. When it is running we will publish the weighbridge figures, what the conversion cost, and what the paperwork actually took.
What it would mean for a rental week
For a customer, the practical difference is the number of weeks in the year the vehicle makes sense. A roof top tent is a good answer from April to October and an increasingly demanding one either side of that. A hard-sided pod with heating is a January answer — which is the whole premise of the routes we have been writing: Epirus and Zagori, Western Macedonia, Eastern Macedonia and Thrace. Those are trips where the ground is frozen, the villages are open and the campsites are not.
It also changes where you can stop. Our list of 48 Peloponnese campsites with their opening months and phone numbers exists because sixteen of them stay open through the winter and the rest do not. A vehicle that is self-contained widens that considerably — within the rules, which in Greece means organised sites and not wherever you like.
If you are thinking about a build
As of August 2026 we could not find a single Greek company importing, building or fitting canopy campers. There are shops selling roof top tents, and shops selling hardtops, and one operator renting a pickup with a roof tent. Nobody in between. That gap is part of why we are doing this.
If you are working through the same decision — which format, which base vehicle, what the payload allows, what the paperwork involves — we are happy to compare notes while we go through it ourselves. info@camperjimny.com, or WhatsApp +30 6988 766 204. We will say plainly when we do not know something, as we have above.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a canopy camper and a roof top tent?
A roof top tent is a canvas tent on roof bars that you deploy and pack down each time, typically 60–90 kg. A canopy camper is a hardshell pod that replaces the pickup's bed cover, with rigid sides, a bed that stays made and usually a roof that lifts. It is heavier — Alu-Cab publishes about 80 kg for a ModCAP double-cab base and about 140 kg for the camper module — and on most designs you get in from inside the cab rather than up a ladder.
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CamperJimny rents 4×4s set up for travel in Greece year-round. Bases at Agios Stefanos and Marathon, pickup between 10:00 and 20:00, and Athens Airport delivery if you are flying in.
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