Swift Freestyle 520 caravan

The special-edition Swift Freestyle 520 for 2009 has £1300-worth of additional equipment compared with the standard caravan on which it’s based. A family of four took it to France for 10 days to find out just how special this special edition caravan is.

The price of the Swift Freestyle 520 is nearly £1,000 more than the Freestyle 520 of a year ago. But, with prices generally starting to harden I believe Lowdham has done an amazing job keeping the increase as low as this.

We may not have seen much sun on this tour, ?but we certainly found plenty to smile about in the Freestyle.

A 10-day trip to France for four people, using two sites and covering almost 1000 miles – now that’s how to put a new caravan to the test. This Swift Freestyle 520 is a dealer special commissioned by Nottinghamshire-based Lowdham Leisureworld. Based on the Swift Group’s 520 but with a considerably higher specification plus a few additional detail touches, Lowdham reckons this is the UK’s best-selling dealer special of its year. The company says: “Freestyles are extremely successful for Lowdham. They represent excellent value for money and are bought by a mixture of first-timers and repeat Freestyle customers. The brand has a lot of loyalty and is generally so well equipped that previous owners find it difficult to justify the extra cost of ‘moving up’.

Dealer specials invariably offer an enhanced specification over the caravan on which they’re based – often with very little price difference. It certainly makes the caravan all the more attractive to buyers. In this example, Lowdham’s Freestyle 520 has £1300-worth of additional equipment for no extra cost compared with the standard version.  

We had to find out more – hence the alacrity with which we accepted Lowdham’s offer to put this latest 520 to the test.
Enter family Harding, clutching ferry tickets and dreams of finding summer sun with an August trip to northern France. Two adults who’ve caravanned regularly from childhood, plus children, 10-year-old Rosie (representing the intelligent, sensible quarter) and nine-year-old Rory (the exact opposite, but ideal for testing build quality and practicality).

Rosie  – no stranger to assessing caravans – summed up as soon as she first looked inside: “Hey, swish.” She’s right, colour co-ordination throughout is absolutely spot-on, at the same time unlikely to offend anyone. And I’d defy most people taking a sneaky peek not to be impressed. Rory proffered an initial “no comment” while quietly bagging himself the top bunk.

While everyone’s raving about fixed beds at the moment, this layout shows just how much living space you get when you don’t have a permanent double bed. It’s a familiar front lounge/side dinette/end washroom floor plan that you’ll get from nearly every key manufacturer.

Indeed, from the spacious lounge to the exceptionally well equipped kitchen to the equally impressive end washroom, it’s hard to decide which is the Freestyle 520’s strongest card – maybe they all are, hence its appeal.

Let’s start with the lounge. And you really can lounge here, thanks to full-length settees.

Additional seating is offered by the dinette opposite the kitchen, but I suggest that’s more suited to when the caravan is used by two people wanting a separate eating area rather than when four are on board. In our case, we simply left it in bunk bed mode for the duration of the test.

Criticisms? Great as all those bolster cushions look, they’re not the most practical of items (the shape of the smaller ones renders them useless, frankly. I’d leave them at home). Also, the flimsiest of curtain fittings simply don’t do justice to the overall build quality of this tourer – they’re cheap, and they look and act it.

And finally, some of the upholstery covers have zips, most don’t. I put these points to Lowdham; sales staff answered that the main covers aren’t intended to be removable and that past experience proves to them that the cushion styles offered are what the customers demand.

Night-time in the lounge offers the choice of two six-foot-plus single beds or – with relatively simple cushion manoeuvrings – a large double. In either case mattress comfort was not an issue. Lighting’s great, too, including a good mix of mains lights, adjustable reading lamps and overhead units, all individually switched.

The kitchen is just as inspiring, not least because – despite all the equipment – there’s plenty of work surface. The inventory here includes a full cooker (including electric hotplate – a real boon when you’re hooked up to mains and want to get your full money’s worth) plus microwave oven (ditto). The fridge is from Thetford, a 107-litre unit that again proved itself more than adequate for coping with family needs on our tour.

Kitchen storage is very good, a mixture of  all kinds of racking, a couple of drawers over the heater, overhead and lower-level lockers. Indeed, such is the variety there was plenty of scope to put things exactly where we wanted them – for example, tins and bottles at floor level. All this, and there’s even an electrically operated fan in the rooflight overhead.

So, great lounge/couple of niggles, great kitchen/couple of niggles. It must be the washroom that’s compromised? Not in the least. Standards are maintained in the full-width end washroom that is complete with its own shower cubicle and drying area, just about big enough washbasin and good storage. There’s an open shelf up high here, plus a large cupboard ideal for toiletries, plus a locker under the sink, ?plus the wardrobe (which also has some lower level shelving). Toothbrush mug and holder and a soap dish at the sink all proved useful, although the latter tended to fall out during towing.

The equipment list says there should have been a hanging rail in the washroom, something we would definitely have appreciated as it’s ideal for hanging wet coats, towels etc. But, it wasn’t there.

Items of equipment not yet mentioned? Full flyscreen at the door (actually very useful as much of western Europe seemed to have a particular problem with wasps last summer; northern France was no exception).

There are two set-up locations for your TV. Other entertainment is catered for by a Blaupunkt stereo radio/CD with MP3 connectivity.

Outside, we enjoyed the benefits of the wet locker (ideal for shoes, plus there’s a mains socket here for outdoor or in-awning use) and the gas barbecue point.

The Freestyle 520 towed well. Sitting slightly nose down when hitched up, from the driver’s seat, you could feel the Freestyle was riding well – helped, no doubt, by the shock absorbers that are now a standard fitting.

Full marks, too, for exterior fittings like alloy wheels, quality door lock, heavy-duty steadies that are also easy to access, grab handles that feel up to the job, spare wheel and carrier.

The free-standing table is light in weight and therefore easy to use (without feeling inferior in quality). The exterior locker across the front is spacious, access is easy – but the securing locks are a little flimsy.

In truth, this Freestyle 520 is seriously good. It does everything right, and Swift build quality is evident everywhere. It may be a standard layout, but it’s one that works well, for four or two on board.

The Swift Freestyle 520 is cracking value, with this level of trim. The overall build quality is top drawer, my only criticism being “behind the scenes”, where some of the wiring and pipework passes through bulkheads via holes that look like they’ve been hacked out by a Stanley knife (grommets would have made an improvement). With a bit of extra effort (and not necessarily cost) this could almost be the perfect tourer.