Tested: Avida Rock 2018

Large off-road vans are the flavour of the month on the Aussie van market, with their ability to cop a beating on poor Outback roads and set up off the grid for weeks of camping if needed.

Avida has just joined the party with its new 20 foot (internal) off-road four-berth van, the Rock.  As they say, timing is everything and so a holiday trip I had planned to Uluru coincided with the arrival of another big ‘Rock’. As it turned out, we were able to give the Avida version a proper, live-in test, towing it for 6000km from Sydney to Uluru and back over a period of three weeks.

The Rock we took away was the first pre-production sample, as displayed at the Queensland Supershow, so it’s likely final production versions will have a few changes.

Core principles

The Rock shares the same construction principles as Avida’s other, more tarmac oriented caravans, the Topaz, Emerald and Wave. That means a fully insulated, fibreglass composite panel floor, wall and roof construction. However, for the first time on an Avida caravan, the Rock features a one-piece front, roof and rear section.

The Rock has more off-road capability than any Avida caravan before it, with more underfloor and water tank protection, side brush bars, a stone guard and mud-terrain tyres. The suspension, too is an off-road design: independent trailing-arm Cruisemaster XT, equipped with coil springs and dual shocks per wheel.

While this 20-foot example is the four-berth model, the 20-footer also comes with a five-berth (triple bunks) or two-berth layouts. A 16-foot two-berth option is also available.

Weighty matters

The Avida Rock weighed 3280kg fully loaded, just 20kg shy of its 3300kg ATM. The GCM of the Jeep Grand Cherokee tow vehicle and the Avida was 5950kg, which was also just within the 6099kg maximum permitted by Jeep.

This really raised the whole issue of caravan payload weights – while we carried some heavy extras like a generator and portable fridge, we didn’t load nearly as many clothes and other personal effects as you might for a longer holiday. And although we were at the limits for weight, in terms of payload volume we barely filled two-thirds of the available storage space.

The Rock is a fully-loaded 20-foot off-road van – and what appears to be a solidly built one – but you can’t help but feel it would be better if it could lose a few hundred kilos off its Tare weight and/or have a higher ATM.

Speaking of storage space, there was plenty of it. To begin with, on the outside there’s a front tool box, which has a slide-out on each side and a strut-assisted lid that opens to reveal the slide out lockers, a central locker and a tray that extends the width of the tool box. There’s also a front, full-width tunnel boot and a rear offside boot. The only thing I would have liked to see to improve storage was a light in the rear offside boot.

Other exterior features include two jerry holders on the A-frame, a work light on the front panel, a Dometic slide-out kitchen (with gas cooker, tap and sink), and a picnic table on the nearside and an external shower on the offside.

The nearside also has 12v and 240v power outlets, three LED lights (one is a work light), two speakers for the audio system and of course a roll-out awning.

Great family layout

The four-berth fit-out includes an east-west bed up front, a galley kitchen on the offside centre, an L-shaped lounge on the nearside centre and the two bunk beds on the offside rear. The bathroom is situated on the nearside rear.

It’s a fairly spacious layout, and we never felt overly cramped during three weeks living in it, and that’s during a cold winter period where outdoor living just wasn’t comfortable.

The queen bed up front was really comfortable to sleep on and the deep storage cubbies for knick-knacks on the bed head were really useful, as were the dual USB outlets (and two-pole 240v outlets), also at the bedhead.

The only negative about the bed position was that one of us had to clamber over the other to get out at night – not ideal, but you do get used to it.

The lower bunk bed was also very comfortable and spacious, while the upper bunk lacked enough room between it and the ceiling for all but perhaps sub-teens. Avida is looking at revisiting this with production versions, perhaps setting the upper bunk base lower to give more room on the top bunk.

All packed away

Internal storage was, for the better part, excellent. The only area that felt a bit compromised were the lockers up front above the queen bed (they weren’t squared off spaces because of the caravan’s sloping front, so were hard to store clothes right to the top of the locker).

There was plenty of convenient storage space around the kitchen, with lockers above and below the bench, plus two slide-out pantries alongside the fridge-freezer. For three weeks’ worth of dry food, we did end up filling the lockers on the nearside above the dinette with foodstuffs too.

The kitchen bench doesn’t really have enough room for preparing larger meals; so we tended to use the dining room table for any overflow.

The dining table has multiple adjustments, one of which allows the table top to slide back when not being used, to provide more space down the caravan’s centre walkway. Of course, during meals you can push it out a little so it doesn’t feel cramped sitting at the table.

While in the usually more generous L-shape configuration, we found dinette seating was a tight fit for two adults and two teenagers to comfortably sit around for meals.

Slide-out cooking

One of the highlights of the Rock was the Dometic external slide-out kitchen. With plenty of space for food prep (including a large, removable chopping board) you’d really only resort to using the inside kitchen when the weather was bad.

The bathroom was a good size given the overall dimensions of the van. While the separate shower enclosure was ample, there’s not much room in the bathroom for getting dressed.

But if you can shoo the kids out of their bunks and close the sliding partition between the bunk area and the rest of the van, you’re left with a big space in the remaining hallway section in which to change.

The BMPRO Trek control panel gave a comprehensive overview of battery charge and water provisions, plus control of the water pump(s), all within its backlit display.

While it was a great way to monitor these supplies, the water tank level gauges appeared to be inaccurate. The displays for the 125-litre tanks would drop from showing full to critically low –- within 20 litres of the tanks being filled to the brim! It was most likely simply that the water level senders needed adjustment.

For the first week, we ran the Dometic fridge, the water pump and lights purely off the batteries (and topped up with the 300w of solar). It was sunny for five of those seven days, and the battery got to a minimum of 12.2volts (using the user-friendly info panel fitted above the door) and peaked at 12.8volts. It looks to be a promising system for extended camping off the grid.

The Dometic Freshjet 3200 240volt reverse-cycle, ceiling-mount air-conditioner took the chill off the cold winter mornings/evenings in the desert but the noise inside the van (when the compressor cut in) means you’d only be tempted to run it all night if you’re a heavy sleeper (Avida says another type of air-con will be fitted to production versions).

Rock solid

The Rock took on the 6000km trip without any major problems. There was only about 10km of dirt-road driving on the journey – we had planned to include a section of the Oodnadatta Track, but both a lack of time and a tow vehicle with unsuitable on-road tyres made that idea unworkable.

The Avida Rock towed really well behind the Jeep Grand Cherokee, proving to be stable in what turned out to be a wide range of conditions. Strong westerly winds plagued the journey for most of the way to Uluru, but aside from a slight twitch here or there, it was, err, rock-solid.

It was only on the road between Broken Hill and Silverton that we discovered the downside of the Rock’s heavy (300kg) towball download. We had to drop down from the posted 90km/h speed limit to about 70km/h on the road’s deep undulations or otherwise the rig would pitch fore-aft quite heavily. Fitting a weight distribution hitch might have helped with this.

The only other problem we discovered were some pantry doors a little out of alignment, causing them to slide across the top of one another and chip off the laminate edge banding. Once again, being a prototype, a little bit of mis-alignment was forgivable.

Summing up

The Avida Rock could do with a bit more payload, and we assume the issues with the water tank accuracy and laminate cupboard quality were due to the van’s prototype status.

But there’s no doubting how comfortable it was to live in, the ample storage provision, water/power storage and what appears to be a solid build overall, to handle plenty of off-road forays in the Outback.

Specs: Avida Rock CV 6436

Travel length: 8600mm
Body length (open length): 6375mm
External body width: 2495mm
Travel height: 3150mm
Interior height: 2015mm
Tare weight: 2673kg
ATM: 3300kg
Ball weight (Tare): 195kg
Body: Fibreglass composite
Chassis: 50 x 150 RHS steel chassis, hot dipped galvanised
Suspension: Cruisemaster XT independent coil springs/dampers
Brakes: 12in Dexter electric
Stability Control: No
Wheels/tyres: 16in alloy/Goodride Radial M/T LT265/75R16
Fresh water: 2 x 125L
Grey water: 1 x 125L
Battery: 2 x 120A/h
Solar: 2 x 150watt
Air-conditioner: Dometic FreshJet 3200 reverse cycle
Gas: 2 x 9kg
Hot water: Truma gas/electric 14L
Cooking: Dometic 3+1 gas/electric cooktop, grill, oven
Fridge: Dometic 216L compressor 12v/240v
Microwave: Camec
Toilet: Thetford cassette
Shower: Separate cubicle
Lighting: 12v LED
TV: 22in Axis 12v LED with DVD
Price: $88,490 (as tested, drive away, NSW)
Options fitted: External kitchen ($2950), oven ($760), Waeco fridge, Honda EU22i generator (dealer accessories)
Supplied by: Avida RV, Emu Plains NSW