Adria Sport A660 DP (2011)

Adria Sport A 660 DP 2011

Motorhome review of the Adria Sport A660 DP. This motorhome review was published in the March 2011 issue of Which Motorhome.

Watch the video review by clicking here.

This sort of activity-lead, family-friendly motorhome is almost old-school European design, but with few direct rivals Adria may have found a useful market niche virtually to themselves.

After all, the Sport A 660 DP has plenty of appeal – a massive garage, three big double beds, seatbelts for six, and a generous spec list, all for under £50,000. And the design, with stylish ambient lighting, duo-tone fabrics, chromed locker handles, dark wood with contrasting white panels and a jet black fridge, is very definitely bang up-to-date.

It eschews recent trends for an Ixeo or Matrix-style drop-down bed and sticks with a big, classical luton overcab, and where you might expect a half-dinette and swivel cab seats, the Sport opts for the old continental favourite of a pullman-style lounge.

So how does this mix of a traditional theme and ingredients from 2011 work in practice? A week in the Lakes would give us the answers...

WET, WET, WET

Those of you who, over the years, have told me that I have the best job in the world (and you’re probably right!) should have been chez Editor Vaughan on the day I was due to set off on this test. It wasn’t so much raining cats and dogs as throwing whole herds of creatures out of the sky.

I got drowned just carrying gear from my front door the few feet to the 60-reg Adria parked on my drive. And talk of high winds – and resultant traffic chaos – on the radio hardly lifted my mood.

But whereas a regular motorhomer might have put the kettle on and put off the trip for another day, I had a job to do...And despite the wind, the wet, the cold and the spray, the Sport performed faultlessly. Road-tester Le Caplain was always astounded at how well our old Adria Compact drove, musing that it seemed as if Adria got only the best Ducatos. And the Slovenian firm seem to have pulled off the same trick with our Sport.

It’s only the standard 3.5-tonner with the common-or-garden 2.3-litre engine and it has a substantial luton and a 3.10m overall height to force through the atmosphere, but on A1, M62 and M6 it was happy to cruise at the legal limit when conditions allowed and it was pleasantly quiet, with conversion noise almost entirely absent.

Somehow you could just feel that the weight distribution is spot on, while the wide track chassis keeps everything feeling remarkably surefooted. And even allowing for the fact that the Fiat speedo over-reads by 5mph at motorway velocities, our Sport has adequate performance. Hopefully, that’ll still be the case when we get to load up with a lot more gear on a family trip, or booze on a run to France, because this ’van is our latest long-termer.

It comes with the Sport SE Lux Pack, which adds £2,590 to the list price, but adds cab air-con, a passenger airbag and cruise control to the cab spec, so you’d have to be counting the pennies to omit it. The other key option (one we haven’t got) is the Ducato 40H chassis, which adds almost 400kg to the payload and 27bhp to the power output (care of the 3-litre engine) for another £2,196.

Driving licences and continental speed limits may influence your decision on this topic too, but it might be all too easy for a family to exhaust the standard 500-odd kilo allowance by adding a few accessories and loading up the garage with mountain bikes and the like, especially as Adria’s figures include only 20 litres in the fresh water tank and one gas cylinder. To help you stay within the law the inboard tank has a rotary knob (easily accessible underneath the seat cushion) to drain it down from 100 litres to 20 for travel, or to drain it completely for winter storage.

SPORTS GEAR

And if anything is going to put this big Adria coachbuilt on your shopping list it will be the garage. Unlike so many garage models (even expensive German A-classes), it has full-sized doors (1.20m high by 0.80m wide) on both sides as standard, so loading will be easy, while the space within is as generous as you’ll find this side of a Concorde Liner with Smart garage!

Internal garage width is as much as 1.45m and height 1.28m. There are also tie-down hooks and a heater outlet, and the practical flooring has drain holes if you need to hose it down, but there’s no illumination, although you can throw a little light on the subject by opening the internal access hatch.

Otherwise, the exterior of this Sport is reasonably handsome but rather unremarkable, with the new graphics, colour-coded front bumper, contrasting grey skirts, and tall rear corner mouldings doing their best to relieve the boxiness of the shape.

If you want an extra dose of style, the optional Slate Grey metallic cab (costing £1,290) would be well worth considering Inside, the Sport is more contemporary, with the ambient lighting (part of the option pack) running above the eye-level lockers in the lounge, bedroom and kitchen and the curved panel between locker door and base being in white, breaking up the expanse of rather dark woodwork.

It’s a classy, upmarket interior (spacious too, with masses of headroom) that looks anything but budget, but then this is effectively a £50k motorhome, so while it’s more affordable than Adria’s best-selling Coral range, it is also a world away from Tributes and Escapes.

Certainly there’s nothing on the base vehicle spec to suggest ‘entry-level’ and only the windowless habitation door (which is not linked to the cab’s central locking) hints at cost-saving on the outside. The interior styling looks little different to Adria’s more prestigious ranges, though the blinds are the simple Seitz pull-down type.

In fact, you’re much more likely to be aware of the more positive aspects; features like the twin wind-up sunroof-style vents (one over the rear bed, one just behind the cab), the illuminated grab handle and chromed coat hooks in the doorway, plus the useful pockets for newspapers and magazines and the all-pervading feeling that this ’van has been built to last.

Adria even pander to British tastes with lined, two-colour curtains at the big lounge window in place of more European nets, while the wood-look vinyl floor is covered with two-part removable carpets (and a matching carpet for the cab).

SIX APPEAL

Already we’ve found much to like about the A 660 DP, but if you’re looking for a genuine six-berth then you probably need to look instead at the likes of Swift’s Sundance 630L (with its two on-site seating areas) or big bunk bed models with two dinettes, like the Eurostyle A69, instead.

Quite simply, the Adria may be able to sleep six comfortably and carry them all in clunk-clicked safety, but when you get to your site where are they all going to sit? Perhaps an awning with safari room is the answer, or more likely, the Sport will be flexible enough to cater for your kids’ friends coming along too for that sunny summer weekend when you’re barbecuing outside, but most of the time it’ll be best seen as a four-person motorhome. And in that case your offspring can have a double bed each, or you can avoid bed-making and enjoy instant berths front and rear.

If there’s a compromise in the 660’s design it is the seating area, which is just a four-seat pullman dinette with substantial wall-mounted (removable) table. With its chocolate brown scatter cushions, soft-feel wall panel and headrest-equipped seats with supportive cushions, this is as good as pullman lounges get, but it’s not a place for Romanesque lying around and, at best, only three can sit to watch the high-set TV over the fridge/freezer.

Little ones will probably want to play in the overcab ‘den’ or the over-garage bedroom anyway, while the TV can also be turned to face the luton.

SWEET DREAMS

And if the overcab is where you choose to sleep then you’ll be pleasantly surprised by its space and comfort. Not only can you watch TV up there but there’s an opening window and a roof vent, and lights at either end mean you can opt to sleep either way round. A sensibly sturdy net will prevent younger occupants from having a nasty fall and storage pockets at each end of the bed cater for paperbacks and spectacles. There’s even heater ducting up there.

Trunking from the Truma Combi extends right around the rear bed too, and if you’ve ticked the SE Pack box on the order form it’s a gas/mains 4E model, though those intending to go to the snow for winter sports might bemoan the lack of Truma’s more powerful Combi 6 in a ’van of this size. At least you won’t be heating the cab, as that’s simply curtained off at night (though a thicker lined curtain might again enhance winter comfort). With overnight temperatures in very low single figures, the rear bedroom was (like the overcab) cosy, though, and supremely comfortable to boot.

With two fixed steps and a grab handle to help you clamber in and twin swivel reading lights (plus a recess – set into the side of the wardrobe – for books, magazines, specs) this really is an excellent bedroom and although the mattress narrows towards the nearside (reducing from 1.34m to 1.17m) you’re unlikely to find a more comfortable bed in any comparable motorhome.

Finally, of course, there’s the dinette bed, made with the help of the table into a 1.02m-wide generous single or, with pull-out supports and extra cushions, a full double that’s almost as big as the rear bed (although then you won’t be able to use the overcab’s ladder).

CLOSE SHAVE

The washroom isn’t en suite with the rear bedroom, as in some garage layouts, and perhaps more surprisingly, there’s no privacy curtain for the back bed, but you’ll not be disappointed by the on-board ablutions. Curved exterior walls stop the washroom from dominating the interior and inside you’ll find typical Adria fittings (like the tambour door below the grey plastic basin) in a practical design that includes a very generous separate shower with a single large-bore drain.

In the ‘dry’ part of the little room there’s an opening window and roof vent, low and high-level storage, towel hooks and rail, and an unusual eye-level angled mirror that’s well-lit and ideal for shaving. It’s hard to find fault in here, although you might wish that the towel rail was chrome rather than cheap white plastic.

SCORE DRAWERS

In the galley it’s the lack of any tray or recesses for cutlery and utensils that will prove a minor disappointment – in our case simply rectified for £1.95 at our local motorhome dealer’s accessory shop, where we also purchased some non-slip matting for the unusually large drawers.

But the important stuff is here, including a Thetford Triplex cooker that offers three burners (enough, surely?) and a combined oven and grill in one neat and efficient unit that is equipped with push-button ignition. Under the cooker is a super-deep drawer in which our Eazistore stacking pans look rather lost.

Then, alongside, are three more drawers, not as deep but each measuring over two feet across. One of these houses most of our cutlery, crockery and utensils. Inset into the charcoal-coloured worktop is a large stainless steel sink, but there’s no draining board. You do get a chromed rack for kitchen roll and spices, however, as well as covered mains sockets at both ends of the galley.

By the doorway, at the end of the kitchen, there are three recesses (useful for slippers, dog lead, folding brollie etc), while forward of the door is the final part of the kitchen kit – a massive, all-black Thetford 5953 fridge/freezer which automatically selects 12V, 230V or gas power for itself. See, I said this wasn’t an economy-spec motorhome!

All-in-all then, this is a family-friendly galley that even boasts a little bit of worktop space.

STORE MORE

There are no less than eight high-level lockers around the inside of the Sport (three over the dinette, two above the kitchen and three on the rear wall, over the bed) and all feature high-quality hinges and handles with positive locking. Those in the forward part of the vehicle also feature shelves that feel more substantial than most, perhaps because a screwdriver is required to raise or lower them to their alternative positions.

Then there’s the wardrobe, which isn’t vast for a family’s needs but may win the favour of lady buyers with its dress-accommodating 1.40m hanging height. Under-seat space in the dinette is spoken for, however – by the water tank beneath the forward-facing bench and by the gas locker and leisure battery below the opposing seats.


Watch the video review of this motorhome here.

The Adria Sport A660DP eschews the current fashion for a drop down bed and works well as a family six-berth. But the lounge could be better.