Phoenix Caravans

Sadly, they were hyped up to be better than they were.
Too high, constricted in inside space, plenty of other off road vans made at the time were much more capable and affordable.
mike

Mike, when Barry commenced building these vans he introduced the concept of off road vans. The only thing you could compare them with were soft road vans.As far as the "too high" goes they were not as high as some of the monsters you see round now. Also they were a little narrower than the other vans which in turn gave the appearance of them being high. The original ones were not so much constricted in space but were built in a time when few vans were over 20' long. Barry's original concept was to keep vans short so they would go to remote places, they were not just rough road vans that will not go along twisting bush tracks like the majority of long modern vans.His original vans would go where most of the camper trailers would go.. Unfortunately he could not sell many of his real off road vans as buyers were demanding longer twin axle vans that not go to all the places his shorter ones would go. Barry's vans would be the equal of the Bushtrackers.

"Phoenix were originally built by the Davidson family who now run Caboolture Caravan repairs"

Tom, I think you will find that Caboolture Caravan Repairs came first. Barry used the facilities to build his vans. He sold off the van building part as he wanted to go back to just being a van repairer.

When the last owner was about to go down the tubes Sunland and the Davidsons rescued most of the vans that had substantial deposits paid. Some I think had bee actually paid for. Some of the owners complained about having to put their hand in their pocket for Sunland to finish them but they at least did not loose all they had paid. I think that most of the discussin on thesaga vanished when the old MSN forums closed down.

We have a Phoenix (04) vintage, one of the last of the Davidson built vans. It has been virtually faultless and has covered over 100000k,s.and much of that on ordinary roads, Savanah way, Gibb river and many really rougher roads. We always deflate tyres and the van receives regular service, we hope to be doing many more klm,s. before we retire. We have single beds in our van, it is a 19ft.(inside) van and we feel that it gives us more room inside that most other vans of this size. It is fitted with three 120w. AGM batteries and three 130w. solar panels as well as a 3KVA generator, we free camp quite a lot and rarely run the gen.set.
I hope this is of some use.
Cheers, Neville G.