Caravancampingsales Staff•31 July 2007

REVIEW

Winnebago Free Spirit 2115

Winter is a good time to try out the Free Spirit

One of the benefits of motorhomes is that they can be used for all kinds of travel to all kinds of places. While many travellers use their motorhomes to head north for the warmer climes in winter, it’s not unreasonable to head the other way, provided your motorhome is appropriately equipped.

In case a few of you are thinking “What madness is this, taking a motorhome on a ski trip?”, let me hasten to add there are quite a few benefits. For one, the Free Spirit has an excellent amount of external locker space – great for stashing skis, boots, snow chains and all the other clobber that is associated with a ski trip. And this particular Free Spirit has one other interesting external feature which I’ll come to in a moment.

Our Free Spirit came with an excellent diesel-fired Webasto heater. It worked very well in the mountain country and provided a side benefit that we did not initially realise. As well as the main living area, the heater was also ducted into the bathroom, which made it very warm and an excellent drying room for wet ski gear.

Having a motorhome parked in the ski resort carpark for the day also provides a warm, dry place to rest should you happen to need it, and also means that a good cup of coffee is easy to prepare and not going to cost an arm and a leg – if you have ever been to a ski resort in winter, you’ll understand what I am talking about.

Powered by Fiat’s 2.8 litre turbodiesel Ducato, the Free Spirit is an ideal motorhome to take to the snow country. At 22 ft (6.75m), it’s long enough to be comfortable for two but not too big to handle on mountain roads.

Generally speaking, the turbodiesel powered the Free Spirit along well enough. Fuel consumption varied between 16.25 l/100km (17.3mpg) in the mountain country to 15.2 l/100km (18.5mpg) along the freeway.

Headwinds slowed things down a bit on the freeways but even going up the Snowy Mountains roads, as long as attention was paid to the tacho (keeping the motor revving somewhere between 2500rpm and 4000rpm) it wasn’t too hard to keep up with the early morning ‘rush hour’ traffic to the mountain.

There’s one other feature of the Ducato that is useful in winter alpine country. It is front-wheel drive and when snow chains are required to be fitted, it’s a heck of lot easier to fit them to the moveable front wheels than the rear (I speak from experience in this matter), and both steering and traction are consequently available from the chain-fitted wheels.

Good planning

Every now and again I see something that makes me think “That’s looks a funny idea, I wonder why they did that”. Only later does one discover that it’s a good idea rather than a funny one!

That’s the case with one of the features in Winnebago’s Free Spirit 2115, which is actually a four-berth motorhome. There’s the usual double bed in the Luton peak at the front but there are also two bunk beds situated along the nearside rear.

There are two ways of getting into these bunks, at least the lower one. There’s the conventional way – from the inside – but there is also a second way via a large external door. This external door not only gives access to the lower bunk but also to the very spacious right-through storage area underneath the bunk.

Being on the nearside, this door is an absolute boon when loading the motorhome from scratch. It became a very easy job: all clothing and food to go inside the Free Spirit were simply loaded on to the bunk and then transferred to their relevant places from the inside. Everything else can simply be stored under the lower bunk without any difficulty at all. The bunk can be lifted up if larger items need storing.

A further benefit from this arrangement is that if the person sleeping on the lower bunk wants some ventilation in warm weather, she/he merely has to pop the door open. Ditto if she/he happens to come ‘home’ late from somewhere and doesn’t wish to advertise the fact to the other occupants. Of course, a small stepladder and a key might be useful in this case.

There are two Free Spirit layouts available. There’s one with a full-width bathroom and there’s this model, 2115, which is more orientated to a family or two people who don’t wish to use the Luton bed. It has the bathroom fitted into the rear offside corner with the bunks opposite, a kitchen bench that sits behind the passenger seat and the dinette fitted in behind the driver’s seat. Access to and from the driver’s cab is possible with a bit of a crouch but the bed can be lifted up.

Winnebago has opted for a new interior style in recent times, one that results in more curves on the cabinet work and is much more pleasing to the eye. Curtains are used on all the windows, except for the bathroom and kitchen, where slimline venetian blinds are fitted. Windows are Camec tinted acrylics and the door is the usual Hehr item, with a separate non-security, flyscreen. Rooftop ventilation is supplied by fore and aft hatches, and the former is where the roof-mounted air-conditioner would be fitted if required.

On the kitchen benchtop is a Cramer three-burner cooktop with separate Smev grill underneath – great for toasted cheese and tomato at the snow country. Alongside the cooktop is a stainless steel sink, complete with drainer and smoked glass top. Benchtop space is minimal but there is a hinged flap at the end of the kitchen bench. I know some people don’t like these because of the possibility of someone walking in the door suddenly and banging her head, but I think it’s better than nothing.

In the ‘I ponder’ category is the proximity of the bedclothes to the cooktop. I realise there is a three-quarter partition there and a Dometic fume extractor but as I cooked my pre-ski bacon and eggs, complete with fat spattering, I wondered whether a partition that went from the benchtop to the overhead lockers would prevent any cooking spatters, or anything else, from getting on the bedding.

Kitchen storage is quite generous with two overhead lockers, two cupboards (one with wire basket drawers), a cutlery drawer and a floor locker under the grill. On the other side of the entry door is a slide-out pantry which can accommodate a goodly amount of consumable goods.

Situated on the opposite side of the motorhome are both the Dometic 110 litre fridge and the set-at-a-good-height Sharp microwave oven. Atop the fridge is a convenient space for a TV, in our case a large flatscreen unit locked when travelling.

With a large window beside it, the dinette will seat four people on its contoured foam cushions. There’s the usual underseat storage in addition to the four overhead lockers above, and the magazine pouch is definitely a welcome touch, as is the powerpoint underneath the table. A fluorescent light under the overhead lockers illuminates the table well enough.

As previously mentioned, there is sleeping space for four people, two in the Luton 6ft 2in x 4ft 6in (1.88m x 1.4m) bed and two in the 6ft 3in x 2ft 7in (1.9m x 0.8m) bunks. There’s about 2ft (600mm) of head space above the main bed and the lightweight aluminium ladder serves both the main bed and the top bunk.

The bunk users have halogen reading lights but the Luton bed occupiers are stuck with the standard incandescent fittings.

Tucked in between the bunks and the bathroom is a reasonably sized wardrobe with a floor locker underneath. I particularly liked the latter because it fitted quite snugly both my rather large camera bag and my laptop computer.

Where the bunks are located, in the rear almost alongside the bathroom, it’s quite a tight space and persons with claustrophobic tendencies may have a little trouble. If four people were using this motorhome, you have to have a ‘knock knock’ arrangement when exiting the bathroom.

The bathroom itself is quite spacious with a separate shower cubicle, Thetford toilet and vanity unit in the corner. The latter comes with two cabinets, a large wall mirror and is well lit by halogen downlights.

The bottom line

Although just two of us used the Free Spirit for a few days for our snow trip, it could quite easily be lived in by a family of four.

It’s nice to see a motorhome of this length with a permanent set of bunks rather than a folded-down dinette making up the second bed.

The large locker door on the nearside does look a little odd but in terms of practicality worked well for us and there is certainly no shortage of external storage space. On the road, the Fiat Ducato powered the motorhome along well enough, indeed in a manner that suggests this Free Spirit motorhome is aptly named.

We liked:

Driving the Ducato, as always

The large ‘cargo’ door on the nearside made loading very easy, as did the right-through storage

Reasonably sized bathroom: there’s room to turn around without banging elbows

Location of the Smev grill,

which could be attended to while sitting at the dinette

We would have liked:

Energy-efficient lighting all round, as the incandescent fittings are getting a little dated

A full-height partition between the cooktop and bed

Winnebago Free Spirit 2115

Base vehicle: Fiat Ducato 2.8JTD with Al-Ko chassis

Engine: 2.8 litre turbo-diesel

Gearbox: Five speed

Max power: 93KW@3600rpm

Max torque: 300Nm@1800rpm

Brakes: Discs all round

Tare weight:3140kg

GVM: 4000kg

External length: 22ft (6.75m)

External width: 7ft 5in (2.25m)

Internal height: 6ft 6in (1.98m)

Cooktop: Cramer three-burner

Fridge: Dometic RM2453 110 litre

Microwave oven: Sharp

Gas: Two x 9kg

Lighting: 12V

Hot water: Suburban gas 23 litre, internal start

Fresh water: 81 litre

Grey water: 81 litre

Second stage compliance: Yes

Price: $99,530 plus ORC

Winnebago Free Spirit 2115

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