Tested: AusRV Centurion

If there’s one thing most soft and hard-floor camper trailers have in common, it’s that they expand to greater than their towing size.

AusRV’s new Centurion is different. Its forward-folding hard floor bed sits above the A-frame when deployed, meaning that it occupies no more real estate when unpacked than the ground the trailer sits on.

This can be a real boon in the bush, where clear, level ground to set up camp is often at a premium, while it also makes overnight travel stops easy.

The other interesting thing about the Centurion is that it's locally made in Brisbane, although its parent company – Market Direct Campers (MDC) – is Australia’s largest importer of Chinese-built camper trailers.

In some ways, the latter point shouldn’t be surprising. Most imported campers, including MDCs, are built along conventional lines – usually those pioneered in this country – while successful local manufacturers, such as Track Trailer with its Tvan, have found their market niche through innovation.

Locally sourced components
AusRV plays heavily on its locally-sourced materials, that include its in-house built 150mm diameter Australian Tube Mills hot dipped and galvanised steel chassis and A-frame, Brisbane-made Cruisemaster XT independent trailing arm, coil spring and twin shock absorber suspension and DO-35 off-road coupling.

Then there's the locally sourced and stitched 12-ounce Wax Converters Dynaproofed canvas tent and ROH 16-inch alloy rims shod with Mickey Thompson MTZ mud terrain tyres.

To build further confidence, AusRV offers the Centurion with a five-year structural warranty, plus three-years’ cover on electrical appliances.

It’s all very impressive and helps justify the Centurion’s launch pricing of $49,990, which is comfortably above the cheaper imported hard-floor campers, but not in the territory of the top locally-built campers, that sit in the $60,000-plus price range.

So the Centurion comes with things like twin 4.5kg gas bottles, twin 20-litre jerry can holders, tow shackles front and rear, a top-of-the-range Projecta charging system and a Projecta 1000 watt continuous inverter, twin100aH AGM batteries, a 180W folding solar panel, multiple 12volt sockets and USB points, a Fusion stereo with internal and external marine speakers, 14-litre Truma hot water service, a slide-out stainless steel kitchen with three-burner cooktop, twin 80-litre fresh water tanks, an innerspring queen-size mattress and a foldable TV arm with internal and external brackets. Phew!

It certainly made an imposing package behind our Isuzu D-MAX LS-U Crew Cab tow car, with the Centurion standing slightly taller than the ute and with significantly more ground clearance.

Underneath, despite its modest 1250kg empty weight, the Centurion looks like its tank namesake, with its robust chassis and suspension and well-shielded vital organs, while the fully-insulated aluminium frame is clad in tough aluminium composite panels.

Up front there’s a long drawbar with an A-frame mounted swing-up jockey wheel, with the large checker-plate box behind housing for the two gas bottles, while another large storage box, topped by standard twin MaxTrax recovery planks, sits ahead of the Centurion’s body proper and is large enough to house a 50-litre portable fridge on one side and a portable generator on the other.

You un-latch two over-centre rear fasteners and two telescopic rams on each side lift the front-hinged hard floor section off the body. Then, using the front mounted pulley and its attached strap, you wind the floor over centre to the point where it settles gently on its drop-down support bar, which fits into a receiver on the front storage box.

Mext, undo the side-hinged rear door, via its four rotating latches, fit the heavy and rather clunky ladder that’s stored in the front locker and step inside, remembering to duck your head under the cross-beam that links the body’s upper sides.

It would have been better here if AusRV had copied the design rear door of the NSW-built Ultimate camper trailer, and incorporated the steps into a fibreglass drop-down rear door, both for weight and space-saving.

The queen-size mattress is strapped to the underside of the fold-over section and is already in position, so getting into bed can be as easy as flipping a quilt if you pre-fit the bottom bed sheet. The four lockers under the foot of the bed are ideal places to store clothes when travelling.

Because the bed flips forward, it leaves the box section of the camper free for a lounge, or – if the weather is cold or wet – dining. A swivel table that converts to extra sleeping area will be supplied on production versions.

If you choose to eat outdoors, the Centurion literally has you covered with its large SupaPeg batwing awning mounted on the left side that swings around to cover the pantry and the rear entry door. It’s a great standard inclusion, but would be even better if it could be raised higher to cater for taller owners and extended further forward to cover the combined kitchen cooktop and stainless-steel sink that slides out of the nearside front body pf the camper.

As it is, the kitchen slides out at right angles from the camper, with the sink and its hot/cold plumbing coming first and the three-burner cooktop following.

There‘s little preparation area here, but this is provided by the large stainless-steel topped table that drops down from the camper body, revealing a large pantry recessed into the Centurion’s near-side wall.

Switched on camper
Above the cooktop a switch panel that controls all the Centurion’s impressive Projecta electrics with the exception of its inverter, which is located inconveniently in a compartment, above the twin batteries on the other side of the camper.

I say ‘inconveniently’, because if you want to make coffee with a capsule machine, you’ll need to run an extension lead from the inverter’s power point above the batteries to the pantry, so it would have been even better if the inverter was mounted in this area.

Packing up the Centurion should also be quick, but lining up the strap that lifts the flip-over section with the offset rear crank wheel proved tricky and care had to be taken to ensure all canvas was tucked in before the lid would close properly.

Beach camping on Queensland’s Cooloola Coast and Inskip Point in weather conditions that included driving rain and a solid breeze gave the Centurion a good real-world workout, but it remained dry and unruffled inside, despite the continual flapping of its roof tensioning strap against the canvas.

It also behaved in an exemplary fashion both on and off the bitumen, whether beach touring or traversing rough inland bush tracks. It’s in such terrain, where its ability to stop overnight virtually anywhere while hitched, that makes it stand out as an off-road camping option.

The basic idea is good, but the build quality of our pre-production prototype could have been better, reflecting its hard life before it got into our hands.

A little more time and money spent on detail things like the rear step, tent bows and door hardware would also go a long way to making it a real contender in the ultra-competitive off-road camper market.