Full review

The 12-mile journey from the Swift factory to our test venue, Burton Constable Caravan Park, over narrow lanes and village roads, in windless conditions, wasn’t a journey to put Swift’s big-news 2012 addition in equipment, ATC, to the test.
But then ATC stability control is something you really don’t want to invoke. Indeed, the driver is hardly aware that it activates, applying tiny quantities of brake pressure to whichever side of the caravan is trying to stray out of line at the first hint of sway. Yet its presence, for peace of mind and extra safety, is now very highly valued by buyers. Since its first appearance in caravans about three years ago, ATC (and its BPW-chassis equivalent on Elddis caravans) has become one of the items at the top of people’s lists for reasons to change their caravan. Now Swift has introduced this device, joining Lunar, Bailey and others. It comes as standard on the 2012 Challenger range.
Our exclusive test, of the Challenger Sport 636, as representative of the new range, though, went a lot further than a road test. It was ours for a day to explore…
The 636 is a new layout for Swift, designed to accommodate families in spacious surroundings with lots of flexibility. It has three fixed bunks, stacked neatly away in the nearside corner. That’s where the flexibility starts. You can fold the centre bunk upwards, if it’s not in use, to create more headroom for the occupant of the bottom bunk. And you can fold the base of the bottom bunk forward to create a storage area, accessed from the outside.
More flexibility comes in the central area, where the table opposite the kitchen is wider than a simple two-seater. Four kids could comfortably dine here.
By the time our evaluation reached the kitchen we were already convinced the 636 is easily up to the task of accommodating six without making an awning a necessity. And the kitchen’s well up to the six-appetite task. With a work surface about a metre long, plates for six would sit here during the mealtime process and still leave you space for a chopping board and other kitchen equipment.
Challengers have four power points. With the needs of six in mind, complete with games consoles, laptops and phones to charge, we’d have liked two more. We do like, though, Swift’s retention of a feature introduced for 2011 – the recesses above the central front locker designed for phone-charging.
The Sport’s bright white exterior with red and black graphics gives it, surely, a sporty image. But there are two practical features about the Sport range’s exterior that are far more important than colour. Steps on both sides of the drawbar enable you to gain extra height to wash that lovely panoramic runroof. And the gas locker door is wide, making reaching into this area really easy.
And there’s a feature in the roof that you can’t see. Sports are wired for solar panels. The control panel is programmed to recognise a solar panel power input and to transmit its power to the battery. That’s not a new-for-2012 feature, although it will be appreciated by families who like to go caravanning away from mains power hook-ups.
The exterior hatch that gives access to the bottom bunk for storage is almost a metre wide, so lifting large items such as folding chairs or an awning would be easy here.