Here’s something most people don’t know about the Alu-Cab Icarus conversion: it replaces the original roof of the Defender entirely, and when it’s fitted, you can actually stand up inside the vehicle. Full standing room. In a Defender.
If you’ve ever been inside a classic Defender, you’ll know why that matters. But the Alu-Cab system changes the equation completely — and it changed how we thought about the interior from the moment we understood what it made possible.
That said, we went into this wanting to maximize every inch of living space. We just didn’t want to do it at the expense of everything else. The Alu-Cab gave us more to work with than we expected. We ended up having to trade off a lot less than we thought we would.
To figure out exactly what we were working with, I asked the team for the interior dimensions and then taped them out on our living room floor with painter’s tape. Full scale. We walked around it, sat in it, tried to imagine what it would actually feel like to be in that space. We sketched out our layout ideas, gave the drawings to the team, and went back and forth many times from there. Possibly a little obsessive in retrospect, but since we’re an ocean away and would not see our truck until after everything was built, we needed to minimize communication errors.
There’s one other thing worth saying upfront: we’re not trying to build a home on wheels in the RV sense. We’re campers. We like being outside. The interior needs to work hard for the time we’re in it — but the goal was always a comfortable, functional base that makes life outside the truck better, not a replacement for it. That thinking shaped every decision below.
The Windows — More Than Just Windows
This was one of the decisions I spent the most time on, and it started with a lot of time on YouTube.
There’s a whole community of overlanders online who document their builds in detail—what worked, what didn’t, what they’d do differently. I watched a lot of those videos, took notes, and tried to imagine how we’d actually want to use the space based on how we travel. None of what we landed on is original. But it’s specific to us.
The Defender has windows on both sides of the cargo area, and how you configure them has a big impact on the interior layout. We opted for a gullwing window on one side—the kind that opens upward and outward. It lets in light and airflow, and it doubles as a mount for a drop-down table when it’s open. Useful for everything from cooking prep to just having somewhere to set things down outside.
On the other side, the window is effectively closed off. That side houses the interior cabinets and countertop—you need a solid wall to work with for storage, and this configuration gave us that. The exterior of that same side is where the jerry cans live in their lockable mounting brackets.
One decision, two completely different uses on each side of the truck. It took a while to get there but once it clicked, everything else followed.
The Kitchen Setup
We’re not big on cooking elaborate meals when we’re out—but we do need to eat, and we need to eat well enough to function on long travel days. The kitchen setup reflects that: practical, not fancy.
The centerpiece is a 95L fridge/freezer—a single compartment unit rather than a split one. We went back and forth on this. A dual-compartment setup has obvious appeal, but the single unit gives us more flexibility in how we use the space depending on what we need on a given trip. More freezer when we want it, more fridge when we don’t.
For water, we’re planning on a 50L under-floor tank in the second row with an electric and mechanical pump, plus a water filtration system. There will be a slide-out drawer that houses a small cook top connected to a propane canister and a collapsible wash basin. Our cook/clean station is primarily intended for outdoor use but we have the flexibility to bring everything inside if needed.
A countertop with additional drawers for storage runs along the solid-window side.
Comfort on the Road
We thought a lot about what makes the difference between arriving somewhere feeling okay versus arriving feeling wrecked.
The seats are classic high back fronts in G4 vinyl with canvas covers—period-correct for the truck, and more supportive than the original seats. We added extended seat rails for extra legroom, which for two people on the taller side wasn’t optional. Heated seats too, because cold mornings exist everywhere.
Air conditioning was a straightforward yes. So was soundproofing—floors, doors, and bulkhead. A classic Defender at speed is loud. Genuinely loud. The soundproofing won’t make it quiet exactly, but it takes the edge off on long highway stretches.
For flooring, we went with heavy duty interlocking rubber matting throughout—footwells, transmission tunnel, seat boxes, second row, and cargo area. No carpet. Carpet in an overlanding vehicle is a losing battle. Rubber wipes clean, dries fast, and doesn’t hold onto mud and moisture the way carpet does.
The dash and AC housing are in vinyl cladding rather than leather. This was partly a cost decision, but also an originality one—vinyl was the original material, and it felt right to keep it that way.
The cargo area will have seating opposite our storage cabinets and work surface. It’s being designed so that in can be deployed into a small bed, which we’d use mostly for safety reasons if we deem it unsafe to put up the roof tent. It will barely fit the two of us lying side-by-side so here’s hoping we won’t have to use it often.
Then there’s the shower. The Alu-Cab Shower Cube and Tray mount to the exterior of the truck, and will be paired with a Lumeno road shower system. Our best guess—based on the layout of the 270° Shadow awning—is that the cubicle deploys on the side opposite the awning, giving you a covered outdoor living area on one side and a private shower on the other.
The Details That Make It Work
The mud centre console houses the Bluetooth radio, rocker switches for auxiliary lighting and accessories, and USB and 12V ports—essentially the control center for the cab. It keeps everything accessible without cluttering the space.
USB and 12V ports are distributed throughout the vehicle so we’re never far from a charge point, wherever we are in the truck.
Outside Is the Point
The Alu-Cab 270° Shadow awning deserves its own mention here, even though it’s technically exterior. It extends out from the vehicle to cover three sides, creating a proper shaded outdoor living space. This is where we expect to spend most of our time when we’re stopped—eating, reading, just existing somewhere that isn’t moving.
The whole setup—awning, shower cubicle, roof tent—is built around the Alu-Cab ecosystem, and that was deliberate. It’s a system designed to work together, and it meant we could make decisions about outdoor living and indoor living as a coherent whole rather than stitching together random components.
We’re not done figuring all of this out. Some of it we won’t know until we’re actually in it, using it, somewhere far from home. But that’s part of the process.
If you want to see what it actually looks like to put all of this together, we’re documenting the whole thing in the build journal—from teardown to the finished interior. The decisions are made. Now we watch it get built.