Cut-away caravan counters critics

Despite a six year presence in Australia and 850 vans sold, Adria is still battling unfair perceptions of inferior build quality compared to locally-built vans.

That’s the message from Chris Swann, general manager of R.V. Asia Pacific, which has been the Australian importer of Slovenian-built Adria caravans since 2006.

“The local (Adria) salesmen say it all the time, that’s half the issue,” he explained. “(People) say (European vans) don’t last, they fall to bits (on Australian roads).”

“But we’ve got over 850 vans now on the road around Australia going on all sorts of roads, whether it’s (to) the Black Stump or whatever, and they’re standing up. That’s not me, that’s customers... coming in with their van and telling me what they’ve been up to. They’ve had no structural or major issues with their vans.”

Swann took the novel approach of displaying a ‘cut-away’ Adria caravan at the recent NSW Caravan, Camping, RV & Holiday Supershow. The aim was to provide visual evidence of the strong but lightweight construction and extra chassis and body reinforcing used on locally-delivered Adria vans, to cope with Australia’s rough roads.

The specially-modified, 2006 model Adria 532LT, had been gutted and floor and wall sections cut out to showcase among other things its 30mm thick insulated floor and walls, 'hail resistant' polyester cladding, and aviation-style punched C-section chassis with rolled edges.

Two sets of design drawings were also displayed, highlighting the beefed-up construction of the Australian-delivered vans compared to their European equivalents.

According to Swann, chassis construction thickness is increased by about 1.5mm which in structural terms results in an increase of 3-4 times the strength of the same van in Europe.  Together with longer railings and an extra cross member, it adds around 200kg to the overall weight of locally-delivered vans.

Having a lighter footprint than similar-sized Aussie models didn’t mean Adria vans were any less robust, Swann argued.

“(Adria vans) are light purely because of the materials that are used,” he said. "You have to look to the fact that in Europe, a manufacturer has to build to the marketplace. And the carpark over there is all smaller sized cars with lighter towing capacities. Whereas there’s nothing wrong with Australian vans, they’re built to what’s available over here to tow.”

Swann said reaction overall to the cut-away display van was positive.

“I think a lot of the local manufacturers were quite impressed by the way the Europeans produce their vans, and a lot of customers were basically shown what they were buying is what they were getting. They could see the innards of the van and how it was constructed, so I think it went down pretty well,” he said.

As well as displaying the cut-away caravan at the
Queensland Caravan, Camping & Touring Holiday Show in early-June, the Adria stand will have something else you don’t normally see at a caravan show: a Toyota Camry tow vehicle, powered by 2.5-litre four-cylinder engine and with just 1200kg tow capacity.

“We’re going to put that in front of our smallest model, the 390 DS, to show you can actually tow a caravan instead of just a camper trailer or a pop-top (with a smaller tow vehicle), ” he said.