London Show - Elddis Crusader Hurricane announced

ELDDIS IS BUILDING up quite a collection of compact tourers and the Crusader Hurricane is the latest.

The Crusader Hurricane joins the Avante 374, Xplore 302 and Xplore 304 in the company’s unrivalled line-up of short-bodied tourers. Whereas the Xplore and Avante models major on value and lightweight however, the Hurricane demonstrates that more compact caravanning does not mean a lack of kit.

Breath of fresh air

The Hurricane has a unique layout. At the back, it has a lot in common with traditional rear-washroom two-berth layouts. The full-width washroom has plenty of space and lacks little in terms of kit. Similarly, the offside kitchen has the same level of kit as the larger vans in the Crusader range.

The novel aspect of the layout is definitely the U-shaped front lounge. It has been shortened on the offside to facilitate a full-size kitchen while ensuring the whole layout can sit in a 4.7m bodyshell.

At night, the lounge converts into a bed which is the size of a standard domestic double. Elddis also boasts that the unique bed allows people to sleep to ‘toe-to-toe’ although that seems a slightly strange boast. Handy if you have an argument perhaps…

Cracking kit levels

Like all 2012 Crusaders, BPW’s IDC system, an AVTEX TV/DVD player and striking good looks all come as standard, but what is interesting is that the Hurricane boasts the Alde heating. The combination water and space heating boiler is associated with larger tourers. The Hurricane looks set to become the smallest UK tourer fitted with this ‘radiator’ heating system.

Weights for the new model are not yet confirmed but Elddis is estimating a maximum weight of around 1400kg. Prices will be announced when the model launches at the Motorhome, Caravan and Camping Show at London’s ExCeL centre on 14-19 Febraury 2012 but we’d suggest between £18-£19k looks about right.

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