2008 Newmar Essex 45' Motorhome (replaced by Volvo)

Sufficient Motivation

When we returned home after the 2008 Land Rover National Rally, we had already learned an important lesson. Travelling by car, and staying in random motels and hotels along the way, was a very unpredictable way to obtain overnight accommodation. One place we stayed, which was a well known chain of motor hotels, had so few slats under the mattress that we almost fell through the bed onto the floor. That little episode was enough to convince us we needed to find a better way.

The Search For Comfort

We started looking at different solutions for our travel accommodation dilemma. The thing that made the most sense was some form of recreational vehicle. The constraining factor that we had to solve was the one of taking our 3000 kilogram vehicle along on any trips. This meant that the Defender had to be flat towed, or carried on a trailer the way we did when going to the Land Rover National Rally.

We were pushing the limit when we towed the Defender on a U-Haul trailer, behind the Range Rover. The problem is that many RVs have a very low weight towing capability. So this meant we had to bypass the Class C and smaller Class A motorhomes, and look at the larger units. But which ones?

Coming from a manufacturing background as we have, and one that had to produce a very high quality product, it left us with a significant handicap when shopping for motorhomes. That handicap was our ability to spot good and bad quality at a glance. The problem with this ability is that it reduced significantly the selection of RV brands we were willing to consider. We didn't want to purchase something that wouldn't last.

Since we didn't want to pay for the top end brands that used the Prevost coach platform, we had to look for the next best thing, and that led us to a Newmar dealer in B.C.'s sunny Okanagan valley. The Newmar company makes RVs that covers most economic budgets from $100,000 to $1,000,000, and had a reputation for quality. So we started looking at the differences between the various models.

Our towing requirements needed a coach with a decent power band, and to get this we needed to look at diesel pusher style coaches. Fortunately for us, the dealer had a coach that was the previous year's model. Although still new, it hadn't sold the year before, and since we were now looking in early 2009, it was considered a two year old coach. To clear the unit out, the dealer significantly reduced its price to a level that was within our budget range. The bonus for us was that it came with the full Newmar warranty, an extended warranty, and best of all, it had a colour scheme that we liked. The only downside was that it was a 45' long motorhome. We found out in the months and years to come that this length was a handicap for getting into many campgrounds and some RV parks. We also encountered a number of roads that we were prohibited from driving on because of our length. However, the coach was extremely comfortable, and it served us well.

Looky-Loos, A Danger On The Road

It didn't take many months of pulling the Defender behind the motorhome to realize we had a significant safety issue. There was nothing wrong with the coach, or with the Defender being pulled behind. The safety risk was from the other drivers going in the same direction as us.

The rare and unusual nature of the Defender captivated many people along the way, and those that were driving near us would try and get as close as possible to see what we were towing. Some would drive for miles right beside the Defender, blocking the ability for others to pass, and this created an unsafe situation with other drivers. More than a few times, we ourselves were directly impacted by these individuals. This happened when we were on a highway, coming up rapidly on a transport truck on a hill. We wanted to pull into the left lane to pass the truck, but the looky-loo just wouldn't move. We had a choice, slam on the brakes so as not to rear end the truck, or move over and push the looky-loo off the pavement.

These events were becoming an all too common experience. So we had to find a solution. We thought of covering the truck, but fabric covers at 100kph generally don't last long. So if we couldn't cover it, and couldn't camouflage it, then we had to hide it. The only way to do that was to put it inside an enclosed car trailer. The other advantage that would come with having the Defender inside a trailer is that we could then back up with the motorhome. Something that can't be done when flat towing a car. So this meant another project of a significant nature, and something that would only add to the already sizeable length of our RV, and our struggles to fit into a campground or RV park.

More Design Work

By the time we considered getting a highway trailer to pull behind the motorhome, we had already started designing an off-road trailer for the Defender. We knew we would want to have the off-road trailer wherever the Defender was, so this meant we had to be able to carry both inside the highway trailer. This presented a problem. There are laws on the books to restrict the maximum combined length of a vehicle and its trailer. Most of Canada is 65', as is a lot of the U.S., but for us to get both the Defender and off-road trailer into a highway trailer, we would need an actual inside length of twenty feet. So the overall length of the highway trailer, including the tongue, would be twenty-five. This meant a combined length of seventy feet.

We learned from other people towing large stacker trailers that the maximum length on U.S. federal highways was actually seventy-five feet. So this meant we could pull our coach and trailer combination legally on interstates. And because there's a law that allowed us to drive from the interstate to our finished destination, even if we were on local roads with shorter length restrictions, we couldn't be charged with driving an over length combination.

In order to get both the Defender and off-road trailer inside a twenty foot highway trailer, one had to sit above the other. So we ordered a tall height car trailer, with lift columns installed up near the front. This wasn't an actual stacker trailer, which is a much heavier trailer than a simple car hauler, but we didn't need that extra strength. So this kept the cost down as well as the weight.

The highway trailer was built by the Aluminum Trailer Company to meet our needs. They installed the lift columns in the front for us, and we did everything else ourselves. To get the thirty feet of Defender and off-road trailer into the twenty foot highway trailer, we pushed the off-road trailer in first, backwards, raised it up on the lift, and then drove the Defender in frontwards, underneath of it. It worked perfectly.