Quick guide to RV types

Feel like escaping in the great outdoors but can't quite afford a shiny new caravan? Or perhaps you're seeking a camper with off-road cred or Instagram appeal?

Fortunately, there are plenty of recreational vehicle and camping options to help get you out there in both style and comfort... and to suit all budgets from $500 tents to $500,000 motorhomes.

Backyard camping during coronavirus has seen tent sales skyrocket, but that cheap 100 buck polyester tent you picked up at the local Outdoors Emporium, may not be the smartest option for a week-end getaway to the high country.

Tents can be light and easy to throw in the car boot, but cheap, lightweight versions often leak and fall to pieces at the slightest hint of wild weather.

Better to spend a bit more on one with tougher canvas and more robust frame like the user-friendly 30 second OzTent, which also do the ‘three-second’ kid-friendly, Malamoo…

Another popular, affordable canvas camping option, especially for teenage boys, are canvas swags. Once again, they range from basic roll-up swags for one person to big double bed units; some even come with stretcher bed-style fold-down legs to keep you off the damp ground. Swags aren’t great for claustrophobics though.

Roof-top tents were traditionally aimed at bearded 4WD types who don’t mind roughing it but preferably not at ground level with the crocs when camping in the Top End!. Now tents that fix to the roof bars on your vehicle come in all shapes and styles, with some suitable for smaller passenger vehicles.

Once again, the cheaper (and less user-friendly) options start around $1000, all the way to around $5000 for a slick fibreglass unit or one that automatically erects at the touch of a button.

With utes making up around a quarter of all vehicles sold in Australia, a lightweight camper module that slides on and off the back of a ute tray makes a lot of sense. Often equipped with kitchens as well as interior bedding and storage, they have fold-down legs so you can store them in the garage when not out camping.

Unfortunately, many (but not all) slide-on campers are designed for flat aluminium trays on single cab utes (rather than the more popular high-side dual-cab utes), but they’re a great option if you hate towing or want to head bush with your ute.

Over the past decade Australia’s tent trailer market has been flooded by cheap Chinese-built imports. Fortunately, the quality has improved so you can now get a decent ‘soft floor’ camper (basically, a tent fixed to a trailer that folds out to form an undercover living room) from as little as $5000. The main catch is that they can take hours to set up and pack up!

More expensive (from around $15,000) are ‘hard floor’ tent trailers, that fold out  forwards or backwards (or both ways) to create off-the-ground, canvas-covered living and sleeping areas. Most come with basic battery power, water tanks and a slide-out kitchen, for a fuss-free city escape. Some even self-inflate...

These are the more family-focussed tent trailers, often with a wind-up roof and slide-out bed at each end, and popularized by Australia’s biggest RV manufacturer Jayco. Starting around $15,000, they’re a good option for first-timers, although some require Popeye arms to wind the roof up and down…

Bondwood teardrop campers were big back in the 1930s, but they’ve recently made a comeback due to their cute styling, easy towing and ‘romantic’ cosy bed. Despite their small size and  light weight, they’re not always cheap with very basic examples starting around $15,000.

A mix of caravan and camper trailer designs, hybrid campers are the latest fad for people sick of packing up wet (or leaky tent canvas) but still want the off-road benefits of a smaller trailer.

Blending inside and outside amenities, they’re relatively easy to set up with either a fixed or pop-top roof and often pull-out sides for the beds. The downside of hybrids is they're generally pricier (from around $30,000), but you can get a lot of bang for your buck including hot water, internal and/or external showers, battery-powered fridge and gas cooking equipment.

Full-size caravans come in a range of sizes, constructions types, interior layouts and weights, with either fixed or pop-top roofs and sometimes a slide-out section or two to increase interior living space.

Most caravans sold these days come with a host of luxuries your parents never got to enjoy, like internal showers and toilets, apartment=style kitchens, leather lounge/dinettes, coil spring queen beds (and bunk beds in family vans), and increasingly an air-conditioner and washing machine.

You pay anything from around $30,000 for the cheapest Australian-built caravans, to well into six figures for big off-road caravans with the lot. You can even get one with a spa bath!

If you hadn’t noticed from the regular caravan roll-overs reported in the news, caravans attached to tow vehicles via a small 50mm ball coupling aren’t always the most stable rigs on the road.

Fifth-wheel caravans – where the hitch coupling is located in the ute tray and secured more like a truck rig, are much more stable at highway speeds. Unfortunately, fifth-wheel caravans are very popular in the USA but not so much in Australia, so any examples sold here are generally quite heavy and expensive.

You don’t have to be a feral backpacker to enjoy the cramped confines of a small, Kombi-style campervan. The ultimate stealth camper, campervans are easier to drive and park than larger motorhomes, and require little set-up so you can just back one onto the beach, lift the tailgate and enjoy the sunset from the rear bed!

Often converted from Toyota HiAce or Volkswagen Transporter commercial vans, new campervans are usually priced from around $60,000, so a used model from around $20,000 might be a better, first-time option; just as long as it hasn’t done too many laps of the map.

A motorhome is usually a truck or van cab-chassis fitted with a separate coachbuilt camper body at the rear. They’re very popular with grey nomads as well as Euro travellers, due to requiring very little set-up and increased safety and convenience due to walk-through access from the driver's seat to the rear living section.

The downside of a luxury motorhome, which can often sleep up to six people so can be suitable for a larger family or group of friends, is their upfront cost (usually well into six figures). They’re also a pain to park in busy towns and can cause novice drivers grief when the 'Luton peak' over the driver's cabin gets lodged under a low-hanging bridge.

Expedition vehicles are the luxury yachts or supercars of the camping world; big-ticket, all-terrain motorhomes aimed at travelers who like to roam and have deep pockets.

Most expedition vehicles are based on large four-wheel (or six- or eight-wheel!) drive trucks (often Mercedes or Iveco) with purpose-built luxury living quarters out back.

They’re often designed to fit into shipping crates so their intrepid owners can do a self-drive tour of Mongolia or other far-flung places while staying off-grid for weeks on end. Budget $300,000 and upwards for one of these go-anywhere glamping machines.

With fewer mechanical parts, caravans and camper trailers generally depreciate less than cars, so five-year old vans are often not much cheaper than the latest versions. However, used is still a good option for first-timer RV travellers; if for no other reason you decide after a week of living with screaming kids in a 5m by 2,5m living space that caravanning is not for you!

There also some retro-style new caravans available if you want the old-school looks without the mouldy mattress…

You can save more than a few bucks by building your own recreational vehicle. However, there are plenty of traps for the inexperienced, as well as often complicated rules and regulations around fitting gas and some electrical appliances.

However, it could mean you end up with exactly what you desire -- like a life-size LEGO caravan you can actually sleep in…