Full review

The Bailey Pegasus Grande Palermo is a new model with three dining areas – and a uniquely-designed table with hinged sides.

The Palermo gets a new layout for 2019 – and a new width. It still has bunks. And it still has parallel lounge seating. But almost every other aspect of this six-berth has changed. It's bigger – and it's better.

This is how and why: the new Pegasus Grande Palermo is eight feet wide; it's one of six models in the new Pegasus Grande range. The extra width opens up new layout possibilities; configurations that aren't possible in a standard-width caravan, which has enabled the new Palermo to have a much more versatile layout than the previous model.

The Grande Palermo has a wide, four-seater dining area amidships. It also has a tiny dining area at the rear – for tiny caravanners, alongside their bunk beds. The shower room is on the offside, longitudinally aligned.

This layout is broadly like the layout first seen in Elddis and Compass caravans in 2017; now, it has had time to prove its popularity among families looking for a caravan with plenty of space in all areas.

While there are similarities with other maximum-width six-berths, the Grande Palermo has a character all its own and two practical dining features. One is the size of the table which sits between the parallel seat units and clips to the wall on the offside. It's a generous 1.1m by 82cm.

The other is the design of the freestanding dining table. It has hinged flaps at each side, which means it's easy to manoeuvre in and out of its stow-away position with the flaps hinged up, and expands, to take advantage of the extra width of the caravan, with the flaps hinged down. This is a table design unique to Bailey – and it's been seen before.

In 2008, hinged-side tables of a similar design were in Pegasus models – and then disappeared. It's good to see this brilliantly simple and practical idea reintroduced.

The Pegasus Grande Palermo has the Truma Combi 6kW heating system. It's equipped with AL-KO's ATC stability control system as standard. And it has a feature which appears also in Bailey's Unicorn range: a shoe cabinet just inside the door.

That avoids six pairs of footwear forming a trip hazard in the entrance to the caravan! Another nice feature is the wide shelf above the door, perfect for keys, a torch and other small stuff.

Showering

Floor space in the 'little room' is 88cm at its widest point, marginally smaller than the size you'd expect to find in a full-width rear shower room. The shower is bigger than many, though, at 86cm wide and 62cm deep.

Walking to the shower around the loo is a little tight but we reckon most people would soon get used to that. The basin is rather small, at 28cm in diameter, but fine for hand washing and teeth cleaning.

There is one towel loop and two hooks; assuming each person has their own towel, most buyers will want to have more hooks fitted.

Sleeping

The double bed created in the dining area is 1.98m long and 1.13m wide. The table forms the centre section of the base. In the lounge, the bed is larger, at just over 2m long and 1.46m wide. Alternatively, you can use the lounge sofas as single beds; they're 1.87m long. The bunks are 1.89m long.

So, beds for six, or, if four are aboard, two have the bunks and parents can make their bed either in the lounge or the dining area, leaving the other area permanently in daytime mode.

That's brilliant flexibility!

Storage

With six top lockers including the capacious triangular ones at the front corners, the t-shirt and socks type of paraphernalia is amply catered for. The wardrobe gives you a generous 79cm of hanging width and three shelf spaces of the same width beneath. That's more than enough for everyone's footwear plus other stuff.

The storage boxes under the lounge seating don't have front apertures. The slatted lids have spring hinges but they only self-support when you take off both the backrests and the base seating

access to the nearside storage area but it lacks the plastic tray fitted to Unicorns; that's there to keep potentially dirty items including the mains power cable and your chocks away from other stuff. Palermo buyers would want to get around that problem by buying a mat of some sort.

There's a vast area under the lower bunk, as you'd expect, and, with an exterior access hatch, this is a particularly useful area.

To open the boxes under the dining area you have to remove the upholstery which, as in the lounge, is a little tedious because people will have to move out of the way. In this layout, with duvets and pillows for two double beds to hide away, these are key storage areas. So, there's plenty of storage space but not all of it has instant and easy access.

Dining

Straight away, it's an A-star rating for the Grande Palermo here, with three well-designed dining areas. Tiny tots have their own little dining table (with a mains socket nearby); bigger caravanners have two spacious dining options.

There's the 1.1m by 82cm central 'dining room' table, plus the brilliantly designed table with hinged sections on each side which sits between the lounge seats. This table fits easily into swivel clips inside the wardrobe.

Lounging

The lounge feels self-contained and separate from the dining area, and so spacious. The warm sunset orange hues of the cushions inject a welcoming, homely look.

In this layout the extra width doesn't just mean more lounge floor space, it means a wider chest of two drawers; 88cm wide, to be precise. It also means a wider occasional table; it's 84cm wide. The Palermo's lounge is simply delightful.

Kitchen

The fridge is the 145-litre capacity model with a good-sized freezer (25cm deep). The microwave is above it, at a height which most people will find convenient. Storage is fine, with top lockers stretching the width of the kitchen (1.25m), a 72cm-wide lower cabinet and a deep drawer of the same width above it.

In addition, on the other side of the fridge, there's a 20cm-wide, three-shelf cabinet, plus a locker above the microwave.

Bailey's double hob cover design (now in all three of its ranges) gives you a glass lid plus a top surface that matches the work surface.

Its purpose is to give you extra surface space before you start to cook – and it also keeps the kitchen looking neat and tidy. With the hob in use, surface space is limited to 33cm of width aft of the sink. That doesn't sound much but, when you consider there's a large table just behind you, we reckon this kitchen would be up to the task of creating meals for six.

Towing

Our Grande Palermo was a prototype and still confined to the Bailey factory at the time of our review so we weren't able to give it a road test.

We're pleased to see ATC stability control is a standard feature on all Pegasus Grande models.

With an extra-wide wheelbase and four chunks of rubber to keep you firmly planted on the road, we expect this to tow possibly even better than its standard-width Unicorn six-berth equivalent, the Segovia, which was a star performer on its road test. We're sure to get the opportunity to road test one of these superb models; watch this space!

Verdict

With practicalities including six sockets and four USB ports set into the bases of spotlights, a big wardrobe, three brilliantly designed seating areas and a feeling of space in all areas, the Grande Palermo is a strong contender in the six-berth market.

The arrival of this model and its three twin-axle siblings brings the number of six-berth, twin-axle caravans on the British market to 16. Only eight of them are under 1700kg. And only three of them are eight feet wide. So the Grande Palermo's arrival must be regarded as big news in terms of caravan choice.