Lunar Quasar 534

The Lunar Quasar 534 2009 model has a fixed bed in a small, lightweight caravan – and with bags of style

In just over five metres of body length Lunar has packed a fixed bed, a cosy lounge and a partitioned shower.
This layout is a good choice, therefore, if fixed bed is your priority and you also want to find a caravan that’s relatively short. The Quasar 534 gives you another virtue, too – an all-up weight of only 1354kg.

This test gave us chance to let the 534  prove its road manners excel in line with that Lunar reputation for designing stable lightweight tourers. Our 20-mile route, from test-caravan supplier Grantham Caravans to Windmill Farm Caravan Park out amid fenlands near the village of Baston, demonstrated that this Lunar’s towing characteristics were indeed excellent as we’d expected.  

    Corner steadies down, heating on, we begin the guided tour for you...
First impressions? The 2009 Quasar upholstery features colours of dark, rich terracotta. It’s a splash of real significant colour that takes in the cushions and curtain tie backs. Sumptuously comfortable squashy cushions border each end of the settees; the result is a delightful lounge area.

Cosy though this lounge is, it’s the short-settee variety. It’s the compromise you make to get a fixed bed layout in 5.2 metres. It doesn’t make single beds. But the double it creates is of ample size.

There is, though, one little aspect of the lounge we were not too keen on. Beneath the central drawer unit is an aperture that looks unfinished, as if Lunar forgot to fit a drawer in there. The perfect place for a DVD player, perhaps?  Is this why Lunar has installed TV points at floor level here? There’s a second set of TV points at the large nearside unit that houses the heater, plus drawer and cupboard...

Which brings us to introduce you to the kitchen. The lunchtime need to make sandwiches highlights that the shortage of surface space in the kitchen is easy to overcome by using the nearside cabinet top to place plates ready for the table. The table-housing compartment that’s part of the kitchen unit creates the bonus of a a slight L-shaped extension of the kitchen surface.

By night, this four-berth gives you a superb bedroom and en-suite: nearside bed, washbasin vanity unit, offside toilet-shared-with-shower... all standard stuff. Notice the detail, though, and you realise that the shower is well partitioned from the toilet by a plastic door and there is a rail running the full length of the compartment for drying towels; two really important attributes.  

More detail to notice: the wardrobe makes the best use of space by being slightly wider at the front than at the back. This gives you a wide enough corridor between bed and shower room as well as sufficient clothes-handing width. Another distinguishing feature of this model is the curving design of the edge of the heater-top cabinet. Take a closer look at this areas, because it’s here that storage compromise becomes important. The kitchen has no storage cupboard but the offside cabinet gives you two good-sized cupboards and a large drawer. There’s a fitted cutlery drawer in the kitchen but it’s too small to contain table settings plus cooking utensils. Best, though, to keep the utensils there and give the cutlery its own place in the large drawer opposite. So don’t be put off if you take one look at the 534’s kitchen and think it’s too small. Look further and you’ll realise there’s actually a very workable arrangement here.

There’s a mains power socket in the kitchen, a spotlight directly above the sink and a microwave oven above the hob – all in all, a well-designed kitchen in a caravan that wins a lot of fans for good reason.

The 2009 Lunar Quasar 534 is typically Lunar light ambiance, light in weight and short in length but not short on specification or comfort; this Quasar has much to recommend it. Bright modern upholstery and light cupboard top surfaces add to its appeal. One to consider especially if you’re using a fixed bed model as a two-berth, as the lounge isn’t long enough to make single beds.