The bathroom matches the rest of the van both in terms of styling and functionality. MDC has even included a wall-mounted frontloader washing machine above the vanity on the offside, there’ s a cassette toilet, a mouldedfibreglass shower cubicle and something completely new: a roller shutter door to neatly close off the linen storage area. It’ s a small touch that customers were asking for, I’ m told, and it blends seamlessly with the rest of the design and decor.
I couldn’ t find any genuine compromises, either, when it comes to the liveability of this van. Usually, there’ s something that the manufacturer has had to trade-off to achieve something else, but as I poked and prodded through the interior of the MDC XT19 RD MK4, it did indeed appear that this manufacturer had taken a‘ whole of caravan’ approach when designing it around the all-new 48V electrical architecture.
IN THE FRAME
MDC frames its vans with welded aluminium and clads them with composite aluminium cladding and black checkerplate. But look a little closer: do you see any H- moulds to join individual aluminium sheets? That’ s because MDC is able to access one-piece composite aluminium sheets to suit even their larger vans, whereas many locally-based manufacturers are not, and is confident that its fixing system allows for expansion. The result is a more visually pleasing van.
The van is built on a 6in hotdipped-galvanised RHS chassis fitted with X-TRACK trailing arm suspension with dual shockabsorbers per wheel, while aluminium sheeting is moulded around the dual 80L tanks as well as the 80L grey water tank.
One small point that I think speaks to MDC’ s attention to detail: the water fillers are neatly surrounded by an aluminium facia that’ s engraved with the tank each filler is connected to. The town water outlet is here too. Again, I know it’ s a small detail, but that stuff matters.
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