I admit, I’m starry-eyed whenever I come across an expedition or off-road RV, one that will let me explore rough terrain like a super-sized Jeep. And Host’s Outback Explorer has my boondocker’s pulse racing.
The Outback is all about going places off the beaten path, coming with either three slide-outs and a side entry or two slide-outs with a rear entry. It is built on a Mitsubishi Fuso Canter 4X4 chassis and features a six-speed duonic automatic transmission.
“It’s for the people who want to go places you can’t go with your normal RV,” says Randall Pozzi, national sales manager of Host. “It has the ability to cross creeks and go out in the sand. When you’re driving down the highway and you see that dirt road that goes off to the side and you always say, ‘I wonder where that goes,’ with this vehicle you’d go find out.”
Pozzi said the Outback has not been regularly stocked yet due to its cost and the untested nature of the market for expedition vehicles. “Dealers are a little bit leery of it yet,” he said. “That whole field of expedition vehicles is kind of a new thing in RVs.” I guess that means there aren’t as many off-road campers out there as I thought.
For more information visit the Host Outback web page or for more exterior photos go here and interior photos go here.
For more RVing articles and tips take a look at my Healthy RV Lifestyle website, where you will also find my ebooks: BOONDOCKING: Finding the Perfect Campsite on America’s Public Lands (PDF or Kindle), 111 Ways to Get the Biggest Bang for your RV Lifestyle Buck (PDF or Kindle), and Snowbird Guide to Boondocking in the Southwestern Deserts (PDF or Kindle), and my newest, The RV Lifestyle: Reflections of Life on the Road (Kindle reader version). NOTE: Use the Kindle version to read on iPad and iPhone or any device that has the free Kindle reader app.
Jon
There are quite a few off road campers, but they don’t use such big rigs. Volkswagen vans have been off road camping kings since the ’50s. My first camper was a 1959 Volkswagen van which admittedly was hot-rodded a bit, and it was not a factory camper. But it would go almost anywhere, from beaches and deserts of Baja to forests and soggy permafrost north of the Arctic Circle in Canada and Alaska and lots of places in between – including places where I helped to dig out 4×4 Jeeps that got stuck in places I could go right through (at 30 mpg on regular). The most sophisticated of the VW vans are the Vanagon Syncros, which offer Westphalia camper comfort coupled with 4 wheel drive.