Future proof your van!

COMMENT

You see a lot of shoes under new caravans these days.

They belong mainly to blokes who have bought into the mushrooming marketing war amongst rival caravan suspension suppliers, eager for your business.

As anyone who visited the recent Victorian Caravan Supershow will have noticed, suspension and chassis manufacturers are spending big bucks trying to convince us that the leaf springs that supported virtually all on-road caravans until quite recently are now ‘old technology’ and will devalue your investment come re-sale time.

You can probably blame Jayco founder Gerry Ryan.

While the benefits of rugged trailing arm independent coil spring or airbag suspension have been well understood by off-road caravan manufacturers for many years, such systems until recently were only seen on only the most expensive on-road caravans for a very good reason: they didn't offer a sufficient big consumer ‘bang’ for a lot more bucks.

Then Brisbane’s Vehicle Components saw a market niche and went for it with a volume production, lighter and cheaper version of their highly regarded Cruisemaster XT, called Country Road Suspension (CRS).

Jayco thought so highly of CRS that they benchmarked it when boss Gerry Ryan pushed the ‘Do it!’ button to market their own JTECH trailing arm suspension that made a surprise appearance in early 2014, on Jayco’s flagship Silverline and Outback campers, pop-tops, Expandas and Starcraft caravans.

Now it’s available on almost every model in the Jayco touring range except their campers, with predictions that half of all Jaycos will soon be JTECH equipped.

What was interesting is that Jayco wasn't being beaten about the ears for not having independent suspension on their Outback models, but saw a clear market advantage in offering something perceived to be ‘high-tech’ on a relatively low-tech product  and in a heartbeat forced the entire Australian caravan industry to react almost overnight.

Al-Ko Australia Managing Director Sven Mannfolk admitted as much when he launched their Enduro Outback trailing arm system to the industry last September.

Even industry stalwart Simplicity followed suit shortly afterwards.

What they both saw was a mushrooming customer demand to see trailing arms, coils and – ideally – twin telescopic shock absorbers per wheel, when they looked under their future caravan.

The fact that a good independent trailing arm coil system will give your caravan an easier ride and make it last longer on poor surfaces is really just a justification with many buyers. They want something that looks like it's ready for the tough stuff.

This wasn’t a factor not that many years ago when relatively few caravans left the bitumen, but it's become a major marketing topic to the many Australians who want to take their caravans further than the annual beachside family holiday destination.

Al-Ko has now gone one step further, launching its new Enduro Cross Country suspension at the recent Victorian Supershow. Like Vehicle Components’ CRS, Al-Ko Cross Country is a lighter version of its premium off-road trailing arm suspension, but has a drop axle to make it suitable for mainly on-road caravans, less adjustment and hence a lower price.

Being a bigger industry supplier, Al-Ko has not surprisingly already garnered a lot of interest from major caravan manufacturers, who are keen to offer an alternative to JTECH, with Avan and Concept Caravans (Concept, Franklin and Newlands) already planning to fit the system, either as standard or optional on some models. According to Al-Ko, a number of other major manufacturers are expected to follow.