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Chausson 728 EB Flash
Sections:

Key Features

Model Year 2015
Class Low Profile
Base Vehicle Ford Transit
Price From (£) 44,490
Engine Size 2.2TD
Maximum Weight (kg) 3,500
Berths 3
Main Layout Island Bed
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At a glance

Berths: 4 Travel seats: 4 (inc driver) Base vehicle: Ford Transit motorhome-spec Chassis Cab Gross vehicle weight: 3,500kg Payload: 410kg

Full review

For the 2015 season, Chausson introduced a choice of Fiat or Ford chassis across its entire portfolio of low profiles.


Unlike the facelifted Fiat, this Ford Transit is all-new and actually undercuts the Italian on price – by a useful £1,300. Little wonder, then, that the new Transit has accounted for around half of all Chausson sales across Europe.

Unless you require an automatic, it’s hard to understand why an even greater proportion of buyers didn’t chose the blue oval badge on the grille.

The Ford’s transatlantic snout may be too hard to love, but on the inside it’s years ahead of the Ducato. This Ford fascia is more Fiesta or Focus than flatbed truck and it comes with plenty of practical storage. There’s also a big Remis opening overcab sunroof above, added by Chausson.

The comfortable seats can go down low to give a more car-like driving position that should suit most.

It’s not short of grunt, either, thanks to an upgrade here to the 153bhp engine at a cost of £800, which also increases torque from 350 to 385Nm. The Ford is quite high geared, so you do need to change down to fifth sometimes on motorway gradients. It’s no hardship, and you soon acclimatise. The Ford Transit has more forgiving suspension than the rival Fiat, so this chassis is just the job for relaxed touring.

You’ll need to budget for a reversing camera when considering this big – 7.49m – motorhome, but even in Flash spec it has everything else you really need. British buyers can expect 6kW heating instead of 4kW (and mains as well as diesel-powered), a grill, retrimmed cab seats that match the lounge, a flyscreen door and carpets.

The EB (‘Easy Bed’) part of this van’s name refers to the fact that you can wind the bed up and down. In ‘down’ mode, the mattress is 560mm (22in) above the stepped floor alongside. Below, the storage area has two doors and a minimum headroom of 800mm (31½in).

After about 50 turns of the ‘starting handle’ under the foot of the bed, the bedroom looks completely different, with your duvet now lying higher than the bedside tables, while access is eased by the extra steps on each side.

Back in the garage, headroom is now up to at least 1.10m (43in), so there’s room for a couple of full-sized bikes and more besides (so long as you remember the maximum weight allowed is 150kg).

This is not the classic island bed format, but a floorplan originally seen in liner-sized A-classes and only scaled down to this sort of level this season. And it’s not hard to see the reason for its success. Turn left as your enter the habitation door, go past the kitchen and there in front of you is a circular washbasin served by a swish wall-mounted tap. With the loo to your left and the shower to your right, there’s no shortage of room here.

If you like your motorhome’s bedroom to be cosy and private and the bed hidden from view, then this will be perfect but, if you’re overly tall, the solid wall at the foot of the double bed means that your own feet cannot overhang the mattress. That wall is, however, the perfect home for a TV. You could sit up in bed and watch a film, while large side windows here let in loads of light and net curtains keep things private. If you prefer reading, the flexible wand lights above the headboard are just right, too.

The bedroom also comes with three sliding doors (one each side of the bed and one between the bathroom and the front half of the ’van), as well as a tambour door for the loo. Each of these doors has a Velcro strap to hold it shut which will probably need replacing a few years down the line.

There’s plenty of bathroom storage, with a drying rail in the shower and a shelf over the basin. The shower comes with a wooden duckboard and is served by a generous 122-litre inboard, so ultimately winterised fresh water tank.

The same cannot be said of the swivel cassette loo, which has had to be put on a plastic plinth, so it’s not the most convenient of conveniences.

The Flash’s 175-litre fridge is simply huge and there’s a reasonable amount of kitchen storage, too, even in UK models that will lose some of this to the (low-level) grill.

I could easily have found room for three friends around the multi-position table. But the rear seats are rather high off the floor and the cab chairs seem a touch low relative to the table, so a few adjustments here would be beneficial.

Extra passengers can be comfortably accommodated overnight in the drop-down bed over the lounge, which is a good-sized double with decent headroom, although it does partially block the habitation door.

This is an abridged version of the full review appearing in the August 2015 issue of Which Motorhome.
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Our verdict

The Ford Transit and en suite washroom are reasons to buy here, but it's good value for money too.

Advantages

Fantastic washroom
Cheaper than Fiat

Disadvantages

Ford cab profile not to everyone's liking
Drop-down bed blocks habitation door

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