Mercedes Benz Motorhome Review

It's long

I haven’t done a road test for some time, gentle reader, so I’ll remedy that omission right here.

Last week my bride and I drove a Mercedes Benz Motorhome from Brisbane to Melbourne on a relocation for a hire company. These opportunities are routine. The upside is that it makes for a cheap way to see some country (nominal day fee of either $5 or $1 daily).
The downside is that you don’t have time to stop and smell the roses.

We had four days.

The sliding door is heavy.

The vehicle’s full name is Mercedes Benz Ultima 3 berth Motorhome. It is on the MB Sprinter chassis, and has a 2.2 litre turbocharged diesel and a seven-speed auto transmission.

It’s not small (6961 mm long, with a 4325 mm wheelbase and a 1614 mm rear overhang), but the biggest concern for me, a novice driver of such a large vehicle, was the height of 2650 mm.

I did lots of looking up.

Despite its size, it is a very easy vehicle to drive with light steering and great visibility. It has the best rear view mirror setup I’ve ever come across, with views at driving height and kerb. I managed a three-point park at one stage, although I did notice the bloke in the vehicle parked in front looking nervous.

The other pleasant surprise was the fuel consumption of around 11 litres per 100 km. When you consider that you’re driving around one double bed, one single, a refrigerator, a kitchen, a bathroom and toilet and a full set of cupboards, it’s remarkable. The travel was mostly open road cruising, but it didn’t vary much in give and take country.

Pretty user-friendly

Controls are well arranged around the cabin, and there is heaps of accessible storage. The delivery van heritage is an advantage, as it was obviously designed with the welfare of a working driver in mind. I’ve never seen a vehicle with so many handles.

The cruise control, once you’ve read the handbook, is very easy to use, and the brakes light and progressive. It handles well, in a ship at sea fashion, which reminded me of Toyota Coasters I have driven, but the steering was less wandery than what I remember of the Coaster.

The only downside here was the susceptibility to side winds. It was never dangerous, but your concentration level had to be consistently high if it was blowy. We struck some gale force winds on day two.

So much for the vehicle – let’s look at the motorhome side of things.

Dusk in Goondiwindi

It was air conditioned, which was a godsend on the first night with day time temperatures of 40 plus in Goondiwindi, our first stop. Once your gear is stored away in the cupboards, there is plenty of swinging room, although you need to be organised when cooking or getting dressed.

The shower toilet is OK, but for skinny people only, and the bed quite comfortable. You can opt for a double, which creates issues when one person has to get up during the night, or two singles. The third single bed folds out crossways at the front.

Handy overhead storage

Stove (three burner) and fridge are reasonably accessible, and there is a second swing out barbecue on the passenger side rear.  A range hood pretty successfully sends cooking odours and heat outside, although the inbuilt fire alarm went off when my bride was searing some delicious pork chops.

It can be used independently (without hooking up to mains power) but you wouldn’t want to do this for more than a day or two – you’d run out of gas and battery after that time.

In its natural habitat, but you have to watch the tree branches.

It’s a machine I’d happily drive anywhere. It’s big enough for two.

Anything larger would be a bit of an overindulgence, and would become troublesome when it came to parking anywhere in a built up area.

Electric Dreams

There was an electric vehicle expo held locally a few days ago.

The Tesla was the star of the show.

 I wandered along for a look driving a decidedly old tech non-electric Suzuki Alto, probably in itself the most likely antidote to uptake of electric vehicles in urban centres any time soon.

Mitsubishi's offering.

The Suzi runs on the smell of an oily rag, and is small enough to be very useful in town.

Not a sparkie, but it doesn't look out of place in this company.

 The technology on show was impressive.

From the most basic (Nissan Leaf) to the most exotic (Tesla) there was a decent selection.

The most remarkable thing about the expo was the unremarkedness (new word) of the vehicles. They pretty much looked like anything else on the road, and the controls and fit out were run of the mill.

Baby electric Bimmer

The only exception to this visual ordinariness was the Tesla. It does stand out. I guess when you pay $125000 for a set of wheels, you'd expect it to stand out.

As I was leaving, an elderly woman (older than me, so she was indeed elderly) approached me and asked - "Excuse me. Where are the trains?"

Nissan Leaf

This confused me somewhat until the penny dropped. She had misunderstood the expo to be a demonstration of miniature electric trains - not full size electric cars.

Another Mitsubishi (PHEV)

No wonder she was confused. the two small children who were with her were OK with the cars, even though Grandma had promised them a slightly different experience.

Commodore SV6 Sportwagon

In Adelaide last week for our unit reunion, I hired a car.

To be precise, I hired two cars - one after the other. The first was an Hyundai i30, the second a Commodore SV6 Sportwagon.

The car hire was to get me around beyond the Adelaide CBD where we were staying. One of my sons who lives in the burbs was having a birthday, and I wanted to spend time with him. The public transport is good, but I wasn't familiar enough with Adelaide to use it to commute between suburbs.

In addition, for health reasons I was having a non-alcoholic reunion (a contradiction in terms perhaps) and this meant I could chauffeur my digger mates around. Staying cold sober when everyone else isn't is indeed a strange and wonderful experience.

When it became clear that the i30 wasn't really big enough for five aging and largish sexagenarians with buggered knees (we're ex-infantry), and people were happy to chuck in a few extra dollars, I swapped it for a Commodore SV6 which happened to be a Sportwagon.

So here, gentle reader, is a road test.

I didn't spend enough time in the thing to test some of the more exotic features (the self-parking for example) but did a fair bit of driving in the rough and tumble of the city commute. Two issues made that same commute challenging. One was transitory - the fact that most of the roads seemed to be in the throes of reconstruction - and one was a constant - the madness of allowing parking in the kerbside lane of the clearways out of peak hour.

One feature, the blind side proximity warning integral with the external mirrors, came into its own in dealing with the latter.

On the other hand, the interminable beeping from both front and rear proximity warnings nearly drove me bonkers in the rather squeezy garage at our lodgings.

It's a Commodore, so it handles and rides very well. The interior fit-out is leaps and bounds ahead of my VE, although it felt much the same to drive. I didn't find the Bluetooth easy to connect - but that seems to be an issue with my Sony Xperia phone rather than the audio in the car.

The 3.6 litre donk is torquey and gets a nice howl going when it kicks down. I needed to accelerate a bit sharpish from time to time to get into the correct lane, which is an absolute necessity in Adelaide.

The Sportwagon body is practical and doesn't increase the size of the vehicle footprint, unlike Holden wagons of yore which always inherited the long wheelbase from the Senator or Brougham. At no time did the car feel unwieldy, although this may have more to do with my familiarity with the Commodore ute than anything else.

This experience has made me consider swapping the VE for a VF ute when the time comes.

It's a great shame that these things will disappear when local production ceases. They're a very accomplished machine, and although I didn't get the chance to use it as a long distance tourer, should always be the weapon of choice for interstate travel in this wide brown land.

The negatives?

I didn't like the electronic park brake.

And the fuel consumption was a bit profligate - in the high thirteens.

But it was carrying five large individuals in urban conditions most of the time, and I wasn't driving for economy.

Electric Dreams

 This is one for the petrol heads - except that one of these vehicls doesn't actually use any petrol.

The future is already here.

You can now drive a Tesla from Sydney to Melbourne.

The White Marshmallow

Most of my driving is urban.

This is not much of an issue when driving our Focus but manoeuvring the long wheel based ute in and out of shopping centre car parks is a pain in the proverbial.

The size of the vehicle, together with the limited rear three-quarter vision, makes the use of covered car parks pretty irritating. A recently-installed reversing camera helps a bit.

One of my daughters is beginning the learning-to-drive exercise, and a Commodore ute is not the best vehicle for this process.

These are two rationalisations for my purchase of the White Marshmallow.

There's also a bit of nostalgia wrapped up in this. I still have a soft spot for basic trimmed-down motoring, fondly recalling my first car, a 1956 Volkswagen beetle.

Anyhow, we have a Suzuki Alto. It's a 2010 GL Auto with 43000 kms on the clock, and is pretty much as-new.

Perhaps I'm weird, but I enjoy driving the thing. It's very easy to get in and out of, simple to park, and runs on the smell of an oily rag.

It's also roomy, in the front, at least, and vision out is good. The driver's eye height is actually a little taller than our Focus, due to the fairly upright architecture.

My bride took it for a run the other day, and returning with a big smile on her face.

I may have to compete with her for the keys.

iX35

For all you petrol heads out there, it's time for another road test.

The vehicle is an Hyundai ("an" necessary because of the aspirant "h") ix35, which has just been superseded by the weirdly named Tucson.

She That Must Be Obeyed (the fleet manager) had originally allocated me a Focus, but its transmission started hiccuping, so the ix35 was hurriedly substituted. This one was bright red, and was the two-wheel drive 2000cc version. They come in 4WD with a 2.4 litre motor as well, but this one pulled well and overtaking was a breeze. It averaged (according to the digital readout) 7.6lit/100km mostly cruising at 100kph on the flat.

I've driven plenty of Hyundais, from the Santa Fe diesel to the i30 and the i45, but this was the first time I've been on board the small SUV. It was, as befits a fleet car, the poverty pack version, called "Active". It had cloth upholstery, steel wheels, and no reversing camera or GPS.

It did, however, have a reasonable sound system together with reliable Bluetooth. Having said that the connection was reliable, I still have no idea how to set it up. I got it working, but have no idea how.

Apparently local Hyundais have a locally inspired suspension tuning. It certainly handled sweetly, but I found the ride a bit jittery. This seems to be an Hyundai characteristic, as it reminded me of the i45, which exhibited the same issues.

There was plenty of room, and the driving position was about right for me. The seats weren't wonderful (a bit hard), but I experienced no aches and pains after a couple of three hour stints. I do take a break every one and a half hours, however.

These things are well screwed together, but they smell like nothing I've ever encountered before. This particular example had less than 5000kms on the clock, so still smelt new, but it was not an agreeable pong. I think it was the glue used in interior trim.

If I owned one, I'd be putting a couple of saucers of kitty litter on the floor, and parking it in the sun for a while. This usually removes objectionable pongs.

So apart from the smell, it was an entirely pleasant machine. Hyundais are always good value for money, and there are some great runout deals around on this superseded model. If you're in the market for a handy and easy to drive SUV, check it out.

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Of Canopies and Things

Ute & canopy Adelaide bound on Hay plain

Since moving to the dark side, and buying a ute, I've been intrigued with the idea that owners of these useful appliances have something to learn from those who disport themselves in two-seater roadsters.

As I've pointed out before, my Commodore ute has much in common with my dearly departed Mazda MX-5 roadster. Let me count the ways - They are both 2 seaters. They both have removable covers installed as standard (on the roadster, it's the hood, on the ute, the tonneau). They both have front engine/rear drive configuration.

Where they differed is/was in detachable hard covers. I bought a detachable hardtop for the MX-5, and after getting it painted and installing the locking points, ended up with a stylish and secure enhancement to its functionality.

Remembering that, I began to think about enhancing the same security and functionality for the ute.

There is no doubt about it, the ute was a handy device when it came to shifting house. Ever tried to move a fridge in an MX-5? But problems remained, particularly security. On a number of occasions I'd parked the ute at a shopping centre, only to return to find that someone had lifted the corner of the tonneau to have a peek to determine if there was anything worth nicking in the tray. The family Blue Heeler wouldn't get in the ute for love nor money - she's funny like that - so using her as a guard dog would not work.

Handles

Then I began to think about a detachable canopy. One of the advantages of the hardtop on the MX-5 was that it was held on by over-centre catches and could be removed by two people in 10 seconds flat.

 Problem was, nobody makes detachable canopies. Hours spent researching on-line through all the usual suspects proved that nobody actually made them so that they could be removed quickly. All were bolt-ons. I had owned a ute with a fibreglass canopy back in the BC* days, and remembered my bride and I struggling with it when we wanted to remove it. I needed 20 minutes with a spanner to unbolt it. It wasn't all that heavy, but was hard to remove without trapping fingers. There was nothing to grab it with. This lack of grabbing points was a major issue.

The solution was obviously to take a lesson from the engineers at Mazda, and use over-centre catches, and the installation of handles would also make the whole thing more practical. The "whole thing" being the removal and replacement when large items needed shifting.

Over-centre catches

It took about two weeks of phone calls and visits to find a canopy manufacturer who was prepared to make something to these specifications. Basically, they took the regular Commodore canopy, and attached handles. Then they riveted over-centre catches to the existing fixing attachments (6 in all) in the ute tray. The tricky bit was getting everything to fit so it would be water and dust proof, but there is plenty of adjustment in the catches, and it wasn't difficult to set it up properly.

 By way of a shake down trial, I did a brief trip to Adelaide and back to help No 2 son shift house.

240 wiring

The canopy performed exactly to specifications. We took it off twice to shift beds etc, and put it back on to carry smaller stuff securely. It's pretty light, and the vehicle behaves much the same as it did bareback.

There's a light inside, and it's wired for 240 if I ever have the need to camp in it. That setup has to be certified by an electrician.

And strangely the Heeler (and her little Koolie mate) are very happy to travel in it. There's no accounting for dogs.

I reckon I should patent the concept. I'd call it Kliponkanopy..........

 *Before children