Small RVs with rear slide outs
In this video I would like to have a look at a couple of small RVs with rear slide outs, and as far as this video is concerned, please treat this as ideas. Neither vehicle I am going to show is currently available commercially with a slide out, but for very different reasons. One is a small motorhome and the other a small campervan. The Adria Compact is a range of 12 motorhomes from six to seven metres in length and was the first small motorhome with a slide out - at least in Europe, that was made by a main line manufacturer, as far as I am aware. The slide out was placed in a six metre motorhome and this increases the size of the bedroom considerably. Measuring only 599cm x 210cm, Adria was marketing it as a city motorhome and if trying to find tight parking for your vehicle is a priority then this could be the motorhome for you. As you can see in the video, provision was made for a bike holder below the slide out. But, and this needs to be pointed out, if this is a vehicle to be used in an urban environment, do you really want the back sticking out like that in town, and, it seems reasonably fair to say that if the back is going to stick out then you are probably going to need a seven metre parking space to stick your van in anyway! In this vehicle we have a German layout – I suppose it would only work with a width wise bed if the bed sort of fell down as the slide out extended itself – as the rear of the bed does here. You can see where the additional mattress lies. The rest of the vehicle is, as you can see, typical of the other vehicles in the Adria Compact series. Why isn’t it produced? Presumably because no-one wanted to pay the extra EUR20,000 plus that the slide out would cost. This is the Lunar Maira X Trend, a small camper van with a slide out. As far as I am aware, Lunar is the first British company to mass produce a van with a slide out. The slide out comes out to the back once the rear doors are open. Lunar went bankrupt a couple of years ago but as I understand it, is now producing again but only caravans. Here we have a Renault campervan conversion and extra space is gained inside when the rear doors are opened and the slide out extends. The first thing that comes into mind is what would happen to the doors in high winds. Presumably they are secured but would it be enough to stop you worrying about them flapping around in the middle of the night? The van itself is 620cm long and just over three metres high. It is only two metres wide so it should be very easy to drive. Lunar vans were noted for having very little storage space inside and this vehicle is no exception. The bed at the back converts to another lounge so one ends up with two lounges, great for watching the rain at the back and the front but not much good for doing anything else. In my opinion, we have thus lost one of the most important features of the vehicle which is using the slide out to gain space. However this van is not aimed at me but for someone wanting two lounges in a 620cm campervan and if you are one of those people then make your presence known in the comments below. Lunar marketed this vehicle at under EUR65k which sounds very reasonable for a campervan with a slide out like this so we need to ask why didn’t it sell very well? I personally think this vehicle looks old fashioned and needed to be completely redesigned, however you may disagree. So what do users think? From a video published in 2017, one viewer, Matt, wrote that he purchased one of these vehicles from a dealer in 2019. Although he really likes the van, both he and his wife think the slide out is fairly pointless as it doesn't give much more space. The holes where light is coming in at the back are there for the door catches that keep the back doors open, you can tell it was an after thought because the holes have simply been jigsawed out, no rain gets in but the air vents on the undercarriage to allow leaking gas to escape allow a lot of water in when going through puddles. The biggest problem is the back doors flap about in the wind as the magnets aren't strong enough to hold them open so we have to tie them together. Both of these vehicles were produced more than four years ago – so why don’t we see them all over the place now? The first reason could be that people are afraid of slide outs? What happens if the mechanism breaks, are you stuck? The answer is no, there is a way of cranking it back in manually – it takes some time. After all if the electrical drop down bed stops working, then cranking that takes around 20 minutes, how long is it going to take to put the slide out back? The second is water tightness. One curious prototype was built by the Netherlands based company Horex who have a slide out which is wound out manually. It goes out quite quickly, nor requiring much effort and I think that for small slide outs of the type shown in this video, this could be a solution. The third problem is the cost.
In this video I would like to have a look at a couple of small RVs with rear slide outs, and as far as this video is concerned, please treat this as ideas. Neither vehicle I am going to show is currently available commercially with a slide out, but for very different reasons. One is a small motorhome and the other a small campervan. The Adria Compact is a range of 12 motorhomes from six to seven metres in length and was the first small motorhome with a slide out - at least in Europe, that was made by a main line manufacturer, as far as I am aware. The slide out was placed in a six metre motorhome and this increases the size of the bedroom considerably. Measuring only 599cm x 210cm, Adria was marketing it as a city motorhome and if trying to find tight parking for your vehicle is a priority then this could be the motorhome for you. As you can see in the video, provision was made for a bike holder below the slide out. But, and this needs to be pointed out, if this is a vehicle to be used in an urban environment, do you really want the back sticking out like that in town, and, it seems reasonably fair to say that if the back is going to stick out then you are probably going to need a seven metre parking space to stick your van in anyway! In this vehicle we have a German layout – I suppose it would only work with a width wise bed if the bed sort of fell down as the slide out extended itself – as the rear of the bed does here. You can see where the additional mattress lies. The rest of the vehicle is, as you can see, typical of the other vehicles in the Adria Compact series. Why isn’t it produced? Presumably because no-one wanted to pay the extra EUR20,000 plus that the slide out would cost. This is the Lunar Maira X Trend, a small camper van with a slide out. As far as I am aware, Lunar is the first British company to mass produce a van with a slide out. The slide out comes out to the back once the rear doors are open. Lunar went bankrupt a couple of years ago but as I understand it, is now producing again but only caravans. Here we have a Renault campervan conversion and extra space is gained inside when the rear doors are opened and the slide out extends. The first thing that comes into mind is what would happen to the doors in high winds. Presumably they are secured but would it be enough to stop you worrying about them flapping around in the middle of the night? The van itself is 620cm long and just over three metres high. It is only two metres wide so it should be very easy to drive. Lunar vans were noted for having very little storage space inside and this vehicle is no exception. The bed at the back converts to another lounge so one ends up with two lounges, great for watching the rain at the back and the front but not much good for doing anything else. In my opinion, we have thus lost one of the most important features of the vehicle which is using the slide out to gain space. However this van is not aimed at me but for someone wanting two lounges in a 620cm campervan and if you are one of those people then make your presence known in the comments below. Lunar marketed this vehicle at under EUR65k which sounds very reasonable for a campervan with a slide out like this so we need to ask why didn’t it sell very well? I personally think this vehicle looks old fashioned and needed to be completely redesigned, however you may disagree. So what do users think? From a video published in 2017, one viewer, Matt, wrote that he purchased one of these vehicles from a dealer in 2019. Although he really likes the van, both he and his wife think the slide out is fairly pointless as it doesn't give much more space. The holes where light is coming in at the back are there for the door catches that keep the back doors open, you can tell it was an after thought because the holes have simply been jigsawed out, no rain gets in but the air vents on the undercarriage to allow leaking gas to escape allow a lot of water in when going through puddles. The biggest problem is the back doors flap about in the wind as the magnets aren't strong enough to hold them open so we have to tie them together. Both of these vehicles were produced more than four years ago – so why don’t we see them all over the place now? The first reason could be that people are afraid of slide outs? What happens if the mechanism breaks, are you stuck? The answer is no, there is a way of cranking it back in manually – it takes some time. After all if the electrical drop down bed stops working, then cranking that takes around 20 minutes, how long is it going to take to put the slide out back? The second is water tightness. One curious prototype was built by the Netherlands based company Horex who have a slide out which is wound out manually. It goes out quite quickly, nor requiring much effort and I think that for small slide outs of the type shown in this video, this could be a solution. The third problem is the cost.