Compass Rallye 530

The 2015 Compass Rallye 530’s layout is a unique twist on the side dining area theme, with a four-seater table – and it has the bonus of an inboard water tank. This caravan is ideal for a couple looking for a long lounge and large dining area.

Over the past few years inboard water tanks have gradually disappeared from many caravans, swept aside in the quest for lightening the equipment load, to make the total weight of the caravan lighter.

Now, though, there’s a trend towards bringing them back, as caravan manufacturers recognise that year-round caravanners, in particular, appreciate this facility. The Rallye 530 is among 2015’s crop of new caravans to have inboard water tanks; its capacity is 40 litres. And its location is in the area that defines the main feature of the unique-layout 530. It’s under the rear seat of the wide offside dining area. You lose some storage space because of its presence, but in the 530 you won’t miss this space.

There’s space to seat four here; only a few caravans can boast this feature. Among them is one from the same manufacturer, the longer, twin-axle Elddis Crusader Tempest. The Compass Rallye 530, though, has the advantage for buyers looking for something more compact than the family-layout Tempest.

The 530 is designed, primarily, for two. And it’s laden with features. There’s a “Sky-Scape” rooflight over the lounge. It has ATC stability control, an AL-KO Secure wheel lock, Alde heating, and Phantom ProActive tracker system. The fabric is the Aquaclean material which is stain-resistant. And the upholstery is the newly-developed Ozio layered polyester construction that makes its debut for 2015. It’s designed to be as resilient and durable as sprung upholstery but it’s lighter. And that, in the 530, matters a lot, because in this layout you are going to be making a bed in the lounge and maybe also converting the side dining area into a bed.
That’s another pointer to the unusual layout of this caravan; it’s a three-berth, with a luxuriously spacious shower room…
 

Showering

Shower rooms don’t come much larger than this. There’s an almost square area of floor, measuring 1.13m x 1.24m. The shower is large, too, at 73cm square. And the whole room bucks the trend in layout. Showers are usually on the nearside.

This one is on the offside, with the toilet on the nearside. Some will say it’s not ideal to have to carry your toilet cassette through your awning on its way to the CDP; that was the thinking behind the fashion to put toilets on the offside and showers on the nearside. But with the increasing popularity of porches, rather than full awnings, the location of the toilet becomes decreasingly important in terms of emptying it. And we think the new Rallye 530’s shower room works really well.

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Sleeping

When it comes to night-time, creating a double bed from a lounge with Ozio upholstery construction is a lot easier than making a bed from sprung seating. That’s because Ozio is much lighter. For best comfort results you need to turn the seat bases over. That’s not just to place the knee rolls to the outer edge so that there’s no ridge in the mattress. It’s because Ozio is designed to draw any condensation away from your body, and the fibres that do this are closer to the surface on the underside where they are not covered by the seating fabric.
If you want to make single beds in the lounge, they’re 1.85m long.
Bed number three is created using the side dining table as the centre of its base. The leg folds inwards so that it’s parallel with the table top. The bed is 1.8m long and 86cm wide.
 

Storage

The biggest plus-points on the subject of storage are in the shower room. The wardrobe, just forward of the shower, has two rails one above the other, giving you a total of 36cm of hanging space. And on the nearside, alongside the toilet, a five-shelf cabinet will take care of all folding clothes needs. Alde heating pipework runs close to the wall at the base of this cabinet; because the shelves are slatted, clothing in here will be nice and toasty when you select it as you’re dressing.
All four under-settee storage spaces have full-length front hatches. There are seven top lockers, three of which are above the dining area. Overall, storage capacity in this caravan has to be regarded as excellent.
 

Dining

There are three dining options in the 530, although we suspect most buyers will stick to one of them. That’s the offside table, which is generously proportioned, at 59cm wide and 79cm deep. There’s the usual coffee table at the front, and it’s larger than many, at 81cm deep and 65cm wide. There is of course a freestanding table too, but we think few buyers will bother to extract it from its neat housing on the fore end of the kitchen.

Read our guide to buying a family caravan

 

Lounging

Six can easily sit in the lounge, which makes this a caravan worthy of consideration if you like to invite friends to join you. The seating units are beautifully constructed, with rear end armrests that are sculpted and have sections that slide down alongside the upholstery to prevent the armrest from falling off.

The seating fabric is in two sections. The top of the backrests plus the knee roll areas are upholstered in plain cream suede-effect fabric that’s pleasantly tactile. A fine purple line separates this area from the slightly hessian-look main fabric. The same purple shade lines one side of each curtain and appears in big stylised flowers on the four very large cushions and curtains. The whole effect is very appealing.

There’s more than fabrics to draw your attention in the lounge. It’s the TV arrangement, which is really clever. A cabinet in the dresser that divides the lounge from the dining area contains two sockets, one for your TV and the other for a satellite receiver. Cables feed through a removable circular aperture to the TV mounting bracket in the lounge. It’s neat and it’s clever.
 

Kitchen

Kitchen storage is amazing in its volume and arrangement. Between the cooker and fridge is a 46cm-wide cabinet with two shelf spaces and a cutlery drawer above it. That’s as much storage as many caravan kitchens have in total. The 530, though, has a second drawer above the fridge, plus two more, and a 52cm-wide cabinet in the dresser opposite.
The dresser houses the microwave, at a low level that buyers of all heights will find easy to use. So far so impressive. And surface area is excellent too, at 78cm wide, to the right of the sink.

Even the sink is worthy of comment. It looks like highly polished fine-grain granite, in a fawn shade. More importantly it’s large, at 33cm x 40 cm, and with a small shelf area ideal for washing-up liquid, alongside the tap. Everything, it seems, has been thought of in this kitchen. There’s an extractor fan in the roof, close to the hob. And on the rear end of the top lockers there’s a drinks cabinet fitted for goblets and with a recess for a wine bottle.
 

Towing

Rallyes are equipped with AL-KO’s electronic stability control system, ATC, which applies the caravan brakes if it detects the first indications of a snaking motion. It’s a device that you hope will never activate. But the energetic driving antics of White Van Men in overtaking mode lead us all to suspect that, at some time, the ATC box of gadgetry mounted under the chassis will be activated, to steady a potential sway before it develops. It’s reassuring to know it’s there to look after you.

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Perhaps we should just say “it’s a winner!” That’s because this caravan won the title of Caravan of the Year in Caravan magazine’s 2015 awards. It also took the title of Best Layout.
This caravan excels at its purpose in so many ways. It’s brilliant on storage, dining options, showering facilities and on its level of equipment that includes a water tank.
The 530 takes the concept of side-dining-area layout to a new level, simply because the dining area is so wide. We love it!