Elddis Caravans How Good Are They? 

Elddis caravans was started by Siddle Cook who began building caravans at his home way back in 1963. As an enthusiast builder he entered his hand made caravan into a competition for enthusiasts. The following year after winning the competition his design sparked enough interest to enable him to atart a caravan building business.

He started his business just outside of  Consett, County Durham in the UK where he built handmade caravans to order. From this basic start things grew as demand for his caravan increased.

This lead to steady growth over time where new models plus new acquisitions were added to the stable and the name Elddis was adopted as the main name for the company. The company also went into building motor homes as well. As you can see Elddis has had a long history of over fifty years.

Time Perfected Techniques

Elddis caravans have continued to innovate over a long period of time through trial and error as most companies do. They have done this due to breakdowns in manufacturing techniques which caused them some grief.

You will come to notice their improvement is based on long held experience which is hard won in every case. Nothing comes quickly and easily as this company well knows.

In the nineteen eighties the caravans had gas lights which were phased out for electric lights. They also changed the chassis to AL-CDO design. Other innervation's followed like the sandwich construction technique  and cabinet and counter top veneers. These were adopted to bring down the overall weight of the caravan.

The next thing to happen was in the nineties when size and specification became important to the future of the company. It is during this time and as two thousand came around that the lightweight Avante range hit the market by storm. It was also during this period because of expansion that Elddis moved to a new manufacturing facility where they were able to improve even further.

Added Models and Designs

In the nineties Elddis caravans introduced to the market to the XL and GTS models followed by the Avante models in two thousand. A move lead to the introduction of the Xplore range in 2008.

This was a step into concentrating on the luxury market a bold move at the time. From this move came the Crusader Aurora and Cyclone models which all had lots of added specifications.  doing this would allow Elbbis caravans to dominate the market because no other caravan manufacturer at the time had this amount of specifications. 

After this came the next step which was the beginning of a partnership with Henkel adhesives in 2012. No other manufacturer had even bothered to go down this road but have stayed with the old way of doing things.

As a result of resistance to change is probably the reason that their caravans have so many problems. You will notice that the best manufacturers who become leaders in the market take huge risks in order to win big and this is how it has been for Elddis caravans. 

Elddis Range of Caravans:

• Elddis

        Avante 8 models 462, 550, 554, 574,                                                 586, 840, 860 and 866 

        Affinity 4 models 462, 550, 554 and 574 

       Crusader 5 models Auroa, Mistral, Storm, Supercyclone and Zephyr 

 • Compass

         Casita 7 models 462, 550, 554, 586, 840, 860 and 866

         Capiro 4 models 462, 550, 554 and 574

         Camino 4 models 550, 554, 560 and 574 

• Xplore 4 models 304, 422, 554 and 586

• Buccaneer 5 models aruba, Barracuda, Clipper, Commodore and Cruiser

Solid Bonding Technique

Elddis caravans partnered with Henkel adhesives to come up with an innovative idea which was to lighten their caravans as far as they could by using a manufacturing technique they call SOLID. The idea is to create a bonded seal that would be impervious to water ingress and to keep the caravan dry.

This has been done by using high quality adhesives from the car boat and aircraft industry. The bonding of the edges distributes the shock and load evenly throughout the caravan or that is the theory. 

But like everything it is not always perfect and leaks do happen due to pressure on staff to create as many caravans as possible in a day. So Elddis caravans give a ten year body integrity and water ingress warranty for customer piece of mind.

Whether this is honoured is another thing of course, so do your due diligence. When this is done properly though the bond should be impervious to leaks. But their is no guarantee on how long that integrity will hold of course. There are less screws and bolts being used which reduce the caravans over all weight so it can be towed by a medium sized two litre car.

Of course this kind of innovation does not come cheap but regardless of this the Elddis caravans are well priced and hard to beat when it comes to specifications that are added in.  I would consider one of these but I would still check to make shaw that the caravan is in top condition and not a lemon which they will gladly sell you to get it off there hands so be warned...

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