Do you need a second caravan?

The case for owning multiple RVs

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It’s a serious question. If you’re a regular traveller, is one caravan enough to meet all your needs?

The question was raised when I recently looked at Adria’s new Action 361LT micro caravan that packs most of the features that we have been accustomed to find in large caravans into a cute little 13ft package with a shrink-wrapped price to match.

The Apollo sales person said that a number of buyers might purchase it as a ‘second caravan’. It’s an interesting idea when a proportion of the public that prefers five stars to a million stars still regard one caravan as one too many.

But my wife, who admittedly has been spoiled for choice, has consistently told me over the years that we really need three caravans: A large luxury one for coastal winter holidays; a tough, compact off-road hybrid pop-top for travelling to tough, remote areas, where the accent is on free-camping, National Parks and outdoors living; and perhaps a third, small, but well-equipped one that we could load and hitch in minutes for spontaneous long weekend holidays to places where we might spend most nights eating out.

In the latter case, a large caravan that might have to be extracted from storage or a fitted cover and requires time to hitch, load and then be squeezed into the many caravan parks that are still geared to 16ft Bondwood vans, might represent too much effort for the time away.

And of course, a large caravan or a serious off-roader both require a large 4WD or a crew-cab ute to tow them, meaning a large vehicle wasting your time and money for much of the year when you’re not travelling on shopping trips and school runs.

In contrast, a ‘Weekender’ can be towed by the much smaller, more economical vehicle that fits better into your non-travelling lifestyle. I can see where she’s coming from.

Space and money conundrum

Of course, the elephant in the room, I can hear you say, is cost. How could anyone afford to own and store two or three caravans? Let’s re-think that.

If your idea of a normal caravan is something in the popular $55,000-$65,000 price range, then you have a point. But what if you were able to purchase separate caravans for the task you want them to perform, rather than make one size fit all?

I can draw on experience with several caravans I have reviewed recently to come up with some suggestions.

Let’s start with the assumption that you want caravan comfort, not a return to basic canvas and air mattress camping.

The new Adria Action 361LT will cost you about $40,000 or less, can be stored in one of those self-storage garages that you hire by the month or year and comes loaded with everything you need to deal with any type of weather for a weekend, or week-long trip/

This includes an internal, combined shower and toilet bathroom; a two-burner gas stove, a sink and a hot water service; a 100AH on-board battery, an 80-litre fridge; and reverse cycle modular air conditioning.

Sure, you have to drop the large lounge table and re-arrange the cushions to make up the king-size bed, but in this type of small van it’s not something you’re doing every day for a month or two.

Best of all, with an empty weight of just 960kg, you can simply drop it on the back of a $5000 second-hand Camry or the same small SUV you use every day and you’re off!

However, with a small 50 litre fresh water tank and AL-KO rubber torsion bar suspension that’s not designed to spend time off the bitumen, the little Adria is not going to satiate your wander-lust.

Hold on a second...

Here, I give you the Chinese-built, full-height MDC XT12 HR, or its pop-top XT12 sister, currently priced at $36,990 and $40,491 respectively.

Fully loaded with every wanted off-road caravan feature, the XT12 HR is a genuine bargain buy, although its longevity has yet to be tested despite its reassuring five-year chassis and structural warranty.

As well as all the required chassis and suspension off-road bits, the XT12 HR adds 80-litre fresh and grey water tanks, hot water service, an external slide-out kitchen, electric roll-out awning, an outside shower, twin 9kg gas bottles, and two 100AH deep cycle AGM batteries.

Meanwhile inside, there’s a fixed queen-size bed, a combined shower and toilet internal bathroom and a Projecta 1000W inverter so that you can run a coffee pod machine.

It’s not light at 1800kg, but if you don’t load it to its 3000kg capacity you could get away towing it behind a medium-sized 4WD or ute that could do double-duty ahead of your weekender.

The third option

Which brings us to your ‘third’ caravan.

I’ve been fortunate to spend some quality time in nice coastal places like Port Douglas and also doing some ‘big-lap’ travelling where the sprawling room and built-in comfort of a large caravan really come into their own.

Features like large lounges, expansive kitchens, loads of storage space and vast interiors that allow guilty pleasures like watching sport late at night while your partner sleeps, are part and parcel of most large caravans, but unless you’re planning some rough road travel you have some surprisingly affordable options.

To keep the same tow vehicle that you use for work, shopping, school runs and towing your other caravans, you probably want to keep its tare weight as close to 2000kg as possible. This could mean shopping for ‘new technology’ caravans, like Bailey's Rangefinders or ZoneRV's new Venturer models...

Another advantage of these new vans is with some limitations, they’re capable of dealing with moderate corrugations on unmade outback highways for short periods, provided that they’re driven with care.

Go down the used route

OK, if you don’t want to spend $75,000-$90,000 here, the other option is to go shopping for late-model used caravans and if you look on Caravancampingsales you’ll find that Jayco’s now-superseded Sterling models up to five years old make good buying in the $35,000-$50,000 range.

The only problem is that the older the caravan, the heavier it’s likely to be for a given length.

So, let’s put a little Adria, a small MDC off-road van and a second-hand Sterling behind (say) a second-hand, three-tonne capable ute, or one of the new-generation, mid-sized SUVs.

If you shop wisely, your rolling stock investment could be not a lot more than $100,000, which is about what you need to pay these days for a good-sized off-road caravan alone.

Now, have you thought about caravan sharing with your family and friends? Or putting the ones you’re not using at the time on Camplify?s

Got you thinking, hasn’t it!

Do you need a second caravan?

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