Noosa debuts trick electric bed

Fitting many of the comforts of caravan living into a 12ft pop-top is a never-ending challenge for those at the premium end of the Australian hybrid market.

One of Australia’s smallest caravan manufacturers and its most northerly – Noosa Off Road Vans – has stolen a technical march on its larger Sunshine Coast rivals with its latest 12ft model, that among its innovations, features an electric folding Queen bed.

The new hard-walled hybrid camper made its last-minute debut at this month's Queensland Caravan Supershow complete with a push-button mechanism that unfolded the bed across the pop-top’s fixed dining table and opposing seats at bedtime and then folded it out of the way in a concertina fashion when no longer required.

Founder/builder Darren Wilson has also fitted the new 12ft hybrid camper with a full-length pop-top, in contrast to the front-hinged roof that Sunshine Coast rival Rhinomax employs on its Scorpion and larger Renegade, while the 12ft Noosa ORV has electro-mechanical roof actuators at each corner as standard.

“Many of our customers are experienced, older travellers, who are migrating to smaller hybrids because they are easier to tow and set-up,” he said. “They still want to explore Australia, but they are over doing hard work to get there.”

Wilson admits that powering the bed and roof adds extra technical complication for remote area travel, but says the external roof actuators can be disconnected easily to allow gravity to lower the roof should a failure occur in the mechanism.

“This is the 21st century and you don’t need to travel far to find technical help if you really need it,” he said.

The 12ft hybrid on display at the Queensland Supershow was the first Wilson’s small Noosaville factory has produced and like most of Noosa ORVs, was purpose-built for a customer.

In this case, the buyer didn’t want the model’s rear right-hand corner combined shower/toilet that is the same size as those fitted to Noosa ORV’s larger 14ft and 16ft  hybrids. He instead preferred a second door in its place, leading to an external ensuite pod with a drop-down tent.

Locating the ensuite outside has allowed the rear bench with its nest of lightweight, bolted all-metal drawers to stretch across the full width of the camper. A 130-litre Vitrifrigo fridge is located underneath the bench, adjacent to the door, which unusually has no fly screen. This might be an issue for some buyers.

Wilson is considering relocating the bed lower in future 12ft hybrids, so it lines up with the height of the seats. While this will reduced the capacity of the camper's external storage lockers, it will create a greater sense of space inside, Wilson believes.

In other respects, the new 12ft Noosa ORV shares similar features to its larger brothers, such as a galvanised steel 150mm x 50mm chassis, 30mm-thick core XPS urethane composite wall panels, skinned on both sides with 2mm fibreglass sheets and a composite roof.

Its interior is plywood/MDF-free, with the furniture bonded directly to the floor and walls.

Price is another Noosa ORV difference, with the 12ft hybrid costing around $60,000 as displayed in Brisbane, undercutting the cost of its major rivals of similar size.