AOR’s luxury Aurora makes debut

Australian Off Road’s new top-end caravan rival to the Kimberley Kruiser broke cover recently at the Queensland Caravan & Camping Show.

Re-named 'Aurora' at the last minute by 'crowd-sourcing' ideas on AOR’s online forum after discovering that its previous ‘Voyager’ moniker was already trademarked, the sleek new 6.25 metre long x 2.1 metre wide full-height caravan also owes its design to customer input.

"We have been asked for some time to build a larger version of our full-height Matrix,” explained Sales Manager Luke Jackson. “They wanted extra living space, but not extra width so if their tow car (typically a large LandCruiser) could get through a gap, so could their caravan.”

Accordingly, the Aurora is 1.35 metres longer than the Matrix at 6.25 metres, but just 150mm wider than its smaller brother, making it amongst the slimmest of the current crop of offroad caravans at 2.1 metres. ??

The height of its all fibreglass, monocoque body is also around the same at 2.7m, but weight expectedly has risen from a Tare/ATM of 1750/2400kg for the Matrix to 2350/3200kg for the Aurora.

In most respects the Aurora is a scaled-up Matrix, with a north-south queen-size bed up front, a central galley opposite a small café-dinette, but with a full separate shower, toilet and vanity ensuite across the rear of the van, while the Matrix has a combined shower and toilet cabinet in one rear corner.

The Aurora incorporates several ‘firsts’ for AOR, including a tapered upper wall and roof construction for extra strengthening, tandem trailing arm coil spring and shock absorber suspension (all other AOR products have single axle independent suspension) and standard Al-Ko four-wheel disc brakes with Al-Ko’s new ‘Sensabrake’ booster mounted on the A-frame.

According to Jackson, “the demographic for the Aurora expects these features”, but he says this doesn’t indicate a departure from the electric drum brakes used successfully on all other AOR models.

Following a four-week shakedown trip to the Kimberley in the prototype in July by AOR founder/owner Steve Budden and his wife Rhonda, the Aurora is scheduled to go into production at the 14-year-old company’s new 5500 square metre Caloundra, Queensland factory from January next year.

According to Jackson, the first four production Auroras have already been sold sight unseen and AOR plans to make them throughout 2015 at the rate of about one per month.

Base price of the new Aurora was quoted at $128,000 – right in the heart of Kimberley Kruiser pricing, which ranges from $96,400 for the Kruiser ‘Classic’ to $149,000 for the top-spec Kruiser T3.

However AOR plans to offer four different interior layouts on the Aurora, with the equipment fitted to the prototype on display raising its price to $135,000.