Big Little Campers vs Wendekreisen

Both operate from Auckland and Christchurch alone, and one-way hire between the two depots is included on either fleet. The Cook Strait crossing is yours to book and pay for. Neither finishes a trip in Queenstown, although Wendekreisen will arrange another city for a NZ$550 relocation surcharge, subject to availability. Both list their whole fleet as certified to the current self-containment rules, and both say they build their fit-outs in Auckland. Certification is not the dividing line here.

Wendekreisen lists 11 categories against Big Little’s three, and the facilities follow that split. Every Wendekreisen category carries a shower, a fixed toilet, hot water and a heater — LPG on the manual LDV V80 Budget models, diesel on Koru and Koru Star. At Big Little, only The Biggest One, a 6.4-metre Fiat Ducato, has a diesel heater and a hot indoor shower. The Nissan NV350 Little One and the Toyota Hiace Big One take cold water only, no indoor shower and a plug-in 240-volt heater. That heater needs mains power, so both models are certified to freedom camp yet warm up only at a powered site.

The practical filters sit outside the vehicles. Big Little enforces a seven-day minimum on every model, and a shorter search returns no results (Wendekreisen’s minimum hire is not published). It also stops at three berths, while Wendekreisen’s Koru Star range reaches six and offers automatics. None of Big Little’s three models is cleared for unsealed roads; Wendekreisen permits every public road outside a named blacklist, but makes the renter liable without monetary limit on the listed ones. Liability differs in kind rather than degree. Big Little’s standard cover carries a NZ$5,000 bond and excess on the two smaller models and NZ$7,500 on the Ducato, and Premium removes both outright at NZ$35 or NZ$50 a day. Wendekreisen makes cover compulsory at NZ$25 a day, with an excess of NZ$2,500 for drivers aged 25 and over and NZ$5,000 at ages 21 to 24, and its NZ$45 Full Cover reduces those to NZ$250 and NZ$2,500 rather than to zero. Compare these two on total trip cost rather than daily rate — compulsory cover on one side and powered nights on the other both sit outside the headline.