RV REVIEW
Australia doesn’t really build cars anymore. But
caravans? We’ve got more manufacturers than
you can count.
But as anyone who has done the rounds of an
RV show would attest, many of the thousands
of vans built each year look alike and are built
in similar ways. When something genuinely new
and different crops up, we therefore take notice.
Enter the Pioneer Evolution XC range. From
the chassis up, it’s not the Coromal you might
be familiar with. Utilising new materials and
construction methods, the ‘PEX’ may redefine
our notions of how caravans should be built in
this country.
HIGH-TECH CHASSIS
It starts with Coromal’s new FRV chassis, which
Coromal claims to be 130kg lighter than a standard
caravan chassis. Built from 550 grade steel, it’s
laser cut, punched and folded, and hulk-riveted
together, with very few welds involved – it
certainly appears to be a highly-engineered unit.
Our PEX 632 was fitted with Coromal’s Easy-Tow
Sport X Rally wishbone suspension system. Built
for offroad work, it tackled the undulations and
corrugations we discovered a couple hours north
of Melbourne without hesitation.
And then there’s the ‘Future-Teck’ body
construction. This entails a 50mm-thick, one-
piece fibreglass composite panel roof that
stretches from the leading edge of the van to
the very rear, a 40mm-thick ‘honeycomb’
flooring, and chemically-bonded composite
fibreglass walls (30mm thick) incorporating a
foam core. A special aluminium extrusion holds
all sides together.
gorv.com.au
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