December 8, 2019 – Our perennial search for vehicles that remain below the six-meter threshold requires compromises. After all, we live in a vehicle only 5.40 meters long, built at a time when the mechanics cabin was shorter than that of today’s vehicles. The result is that a modern six meter long motorhome is equivalent to our Falkor in terms of space available for the living area. And finding something that is competitive with Hymer’s idea 16 years ago is not easy at all.
In general, it is necessary to accept compromises, which are basically two: on these vehicles you do not have to have a proper garage locker (we do not want to consider the spaces under the rear double bed of vans as such) and a ready bed accessible without having to do any operation. These two compromises frighten most campers, who often think more abstractly instead of relying on real experience, very much.
In reality, there are people who really need at least the garage, and they are basically those who practice a sporting activity that requires bulky equipment. But apart from them (who in any case can sometimes find solutions even without having a garage, for example by resorting to luggage racks, bike racks, roof racks and so on), we believe that the bed is a false problem, at least in some cases. For example, we have the drop down bed. It is true that it is not ready for use in the strict sense, but when we want to lie down, just move a lever to lower it and the dinette can still be used comfortably while seated. And the space that can be recovered in the day configuration without having an always ready double bed is truly enormous.
If you look at a purely holiday use, the ideal configuration having such a compact vehicle exists: it is that of the semi-integrated with rear double bed on the garage. The only reason we don’t like it is that this sacrifices a lot of roominess during the day: the semi-dinette usually has a fairly small table (ours is 70cm by 93cm: try measuring the tables on modern motorhomes…) and the side bench is missing, which gives, in addition to a further hallway for those who sit down, a feeling of space and conviviality otherwise impossible to find. Just think that on our Falkor this bench is not even single, but for two people!
If you look at the 2020 catalogs of the motorhome manufacturers, finding something that comes close to our Falkor has the flavor of an impossible undertaking, even allowing those extra 40 centimeters that take us directly to a six meters value. Searching, searching, we have found very few valid alternatives. But the main point to keep all what we consider advantages is that the bed must be a dropping down ones and that the bathroom must be transverse to the rear. Only with this arrangement is the livable space adequate for those who have to live there in a motorhome and not go on vacation. Bubris will not completely agree with us, given that its vehicle is the classic semi-integral we were referring to before, but we are really convinced that this is the ideal configuration.
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