THIS ARTICLE WAS RECENTLY PUBLISHED IN A WELL KNOWN MOTORHOME MAGAZINE, LOOKS BETTER IN GLOSSY MAG BUT DEAD PROUD OF IT....
Ever since I was a small child growing up in the 70s living in a sleepy Surrey village where a nice new Talbot motor home used to visit the people from next door, I knew I would have to have one someday. As a ten year old boy I would look in envy at the Luton cab bed dreaming what it would be like to sleep up there. As invariably they do, days turned to months and months to years until I found myself married and relocated to Cheshire. My in laws were avid caravan lovers whom I spent long periods laughing at whilst enjoying my fast cars and expensive large motorcycles. Then out of the blue my father in law informed me that he would be taking delivery of a new auto sleeper motor home in the next 2 weeks. Jealousy and rage enthused me but as always I prevented myself from showing it. Then after a nasty crash on the motorbike and the worried look of the two additions to make our family complete (George and Harley) I thought time was precious and the more sedate life of caravanning was sold on me. Now don’t get me wrong our family loved caravanning. The endless weekends away enjoying the summer sun and the annual pilgrimage down to France was most enjoyable. However the dream of owning a motor home had still not left me from them days in the 70s admiring that Talbot. My wife and I now staring the prospect of turning 40 straight in the face had always talked about touring Europe with a motor home when we retire. With the lives of people we knew cut short in their prime I put my foot down and insisted to my wife whom acts as budget keeper more stringently than Gordon Brown to release some funds to allow us to Purchase our dream.With the caravan sold and the Cheshire chancellor agreeing to release funds we set about attempting to locate our perfect motor home. I thought with £20k to spend we would be able to get a good quality relatively new motor home. A modern low mileage van was our requirement along with a good family layout. With money now burning a huge whole in our pockets, and scanning every article and advert in MMM I took a bold decision. I took the option to cut out the middle man and buy privately. Armed with all the excellent MMM guidance on buying privately a trip to North Wales a day before Christmas 2005 led us to find our dream and with a little haggling and a bundle of extras including a full awning a 4 bike rack and a large top box our Christmas present was a 2 year old CI carioca 5 with less than 6 thousand miles and in what appeared pristine condition. Along with the essential HPI check and obligatory haggling our motor home joined us on our front drive.SO WHATS INSIDE?The Carioca I believe is a gem of a family van. On entering the van you are greeted by the fresh light woodwork and the easy to clean wood floor. The layout consists of rear bunks stretching the width of the vehicle, making it adequate sleeping space for even the tallest of people. This is ideal for families with children of school age up as it means when enough is enough they can go off to the land of nod without you having to stagger around your van after your obligatory bottle of cheap French wine trying to erect and make a sleeping area. This coupled with the dining area means that there is always space in the middle of the van (unless you are a larger family and wish to make the dining area up to gain an extra two berths). Then with the more than generous sized and equipped overhead cab bed along with a nice filled mattress, sleeping in the carioca is like, well sleeping at home?The kitchen area is at best basic and adequate. Of course there’s the sink and drainer along with the hob and grill but no oven. A good capacity fridge ensures that your evenings entertainment can be kick started with a nice chilled drink. Having no oven is a matter of taste in my opinion. For if you were full timing or spending long periods away it would be useful, but for us when we go away it’s more snack type foods unless we treat ourselves to a meal out. As for keeping us toastie warm during the cold nights the carioca is equipped with a gas run fire with blown air heating. Although useful it has been very rare for us to use this option. Instead if we are on site we tend to hook up our electric and connect our little thermostatically controlled heater to keep the temperature controlled just right for the night. When we have used the gas option whilst wild camping it has been more than adequate for our needs and none of our family have yet woken up covered in icicles, including in Easter in the very north east of Scotland for a few nights. Hot water comes by the way of a switch neatly located behind the dining seat and is gas heated. On occasions a few attempts to ignite the system have been needed but on the whole so far quite reliable. Of course with storage for two 7.5 kg gas containers we never worry about running out.The bathroom has ample of space for our family but at 5ft 8 I am head and shoulders above the rest of them and taller people might find it a little restrictive but no more so than many others. The toilet comprises of a neat electric flush and swivel base and has yet to meet with any complaints from any of the other clan. Indeed on a recent holiday to France my children kept inviting other peoples children around to use IT!! Much of course to me chief toilet emptying mans annoyance. The shower has only been used once by my wife and never by the rest of us. Not you will understand because we like being dirty but because we opt to use site showers or no shower if we are wild camping overnight. But my wife was singing when using the shower which points in the direction of everything being rosy.Now when you’re a growing family attempting to holiday for as many as three weeks and several weekenders storage and organisation is key. The carioca comes with a nice sized wardrobe and 6 overhead storage lockers as well as storage space under the dining seat, the other housing the fresh water tank. There is though one major downside. There is a sort of place for the TV, but the person whom thought to put the TV where it goes must of designed it with input from my wife’s yoga group. The TV in its homed position cannot really be seen from any location within the van without a follow up visit to the ciro practitioners. We got around this problem by adapting our laptop so we can now watch telly on it whilst at the diner table, and to be honest whom really wants to go away and spend the night watching telly? But the Carioca’s weapon in the storage department is its half garage type storage. This runs right across the back of the van and can be accessed from both sides. At just over 60cms high but over 7ft long it’s ideal for storing all the essentials and the space can be increased by folding up the rear bottom bunk. The storage space can also be accessed from the inside of the van. All in all we find there is plenty of room for a young family within the cariocaSO LETS DRIVENow mostly the carioca is good but there are times when you wonder what you have done. These times hit me whilst last year we endured a trip that took in or whizzed past France Belgium Holland Germany Switzerland and Luxembourg. Now these moments I talk about? They come when you look ahead and see a nice hill that when in your car you wouldn’t give a second thought about. The 2-0 JTD Fiat ducato is with out doubt a super tool. But put half a house on its back and things are going to be different. This is and probably along with any other 2-0 coach built motor home a grossly underpowered unit for a vehicle of this size. Don’t get me wrong it will of course get up the hill with a gear change or two or even three and it will cruise at 65 mph along the flat with no problem but give it a hill and it becomes as exhausted as a fox in a chicken farm. This said a return of approx 25 to the gallon and more when in France and Germany (why is that) is not to bad I suppose. However with my new super chip courtesy of MMM march supplement how to improve your motor home to be fitted next month I am hoping that this years trips to France and Hungary with the latter taking in France Belgium Germany Slovakia Croatia Italy Switzerland and back through France to be less of a strain. This all said I find the ducato a very easy van to drive as regards its comfort and manoeuvrability. Power steering helps of course and disc brakes on the front and drums on the rear means it stops with out to much of a problem. As far as safety goes it worries me more that although officially a six berth motor home there are belted three point seats for four with the other two getting a lap belt.So what’s the problem?Well so far in terms of running the van not a lot. All the gadgets work well and other than a lose connection on the leisure battery terminal easily rectified with a spanner; interiorly the van has been good. I wouldn’t like to have to take the leisure battery out though due to its location. Bear in mind that we have two children aged 10 and 8 whom have yet to learn how to shut doors only slam them, the doors and such are holding out well.So is there a problem? Well yes unfortunately. As a competent DIY person I have taken fastidious care of the engine running of the motor home with regular oil changes and so on. However last year I became very uneasy with the sight of what looked like damp on the garage door. The garage door has a rubber seal around it, this coupled with its very poor fitting had allowed water to run behind the garage door and gather at the bottom of the door this culminated in water ingress on the garage door. A refitting of the door by myself prevented any further damage but the damage was already done. A few phone calls to the original dealer and CI themselves ended unfruitful as I had not changed the warranty in to my name, it led me to just think the hassle of following it through would not be worth it. However this year has seen a leaky rear mould around the bumper, once again culminate in a little damp patch. I therefore opted to reseal and re board the affected area as well as completely replacing the wallboard on the garage door. I don’t think that readers should think these problems relate to a particular model because in enlisting help from others on web site forums I am simply amazed at the amount of people whom have suffered similar fate to mine with more expensive models.So all said do we like our van? Well to be quite honest we love it. Yes there are better models out there on the quality stakes of course there is. But there are models ten years older and being advertised on dealers forecourts for more than ours was at two years old. What we really love is motor homing. The adventure and freedom it gives us and the release from our ever-stressful lives is great. Our motor home comes under the budget range we know that but do we care? No of course not. For what it has done has allowed us the opportunity to get on board and tour with the confidence of a fairly new van. It’s rigid and strong but a little slow, puts up with banging and crashing from excited children but most of all its ours, and the sad thing is she even has a name, she’s called Nessie.LIKES.The amazing storage space,RobustFlooringWOULD OF LIKEDTo let in more light a Heiki roof lightAn extractor fanA bigger engineWE DISLIKEDWater ingressMetal post behind pasanger seat.SPECIFICATIONSBase vehicle - Fiat Ducatto 2-0 JTDEngine - 2-0 turbo charged dieselConverted by CIPrice new £28995Price Paid £20kHeight 3mWidth 7.6Berths 6Travel seats 6 with 2 lap beltsFresh water tankWaste Water tank 105LitreFresh water 110 litre
