Itineo FC650 motorhome

Berths: 4 Travel seats: 4 Base vehicle: Fiat Ducato Gross weight: 3,500kg Payload: 426kg

A spacious open-plan lounge. A kitchen with plenty of worktop and a huge fridge/freezer. A full-width rear washroom with massive wardrobe and separate shower. A big garage with three exterior loading doors and internal access, too. That all this is possible in a motorhome measuring just a smidge over six-and-a-half metres is pretty remarkable. That it’s an A-class with a price tag of just £55k makes you wonder why all two-person motorhomes aren’t like this.

Let’s start with the outside, because you won’t mistake an Itineo for any other ’van. There are improvements for 2019 – such as a reinforced driver’s door, bigger garage doors and more angular skirts – but the overall look retains the brand’s own style.

More importantly, perhaps, this compact model has a very uncompact garage boasting floor-to-ceiling storage on the offside and 1.20m headroom across the full width. There’s a lowered GRP floor here with a drain hole and a 150kg weight limit. But there are other reasonably small coachbuilts with unusually generous storage.

What really stands out here is the spaciousness inside, along with the bold new décor using lighter-coloured woodwork, a matt finish for the (now handleless) duo-tone top locker doors, high-contrast black kitchen worktops, new backlit mirror in the entrance and new net curtains. There’s a very, very open feeling in the living area enhanced by the big A-class windscreen, fold-in-half table, full-width cab and large floor area between the lounge and galley. There’s a flat floor from the cab to the kitchen, too, although there’s a 130mm step up into the bathroom.

Of course, there’s no fixed bed here but the drop-down A-class bed in the cab is the main sleeping space – measuring 1.86m by 1.41m. You can make the lounge into another bed – and the lounge’s side settees can convert into forward-facing travel seats – but the FC650 is best seen as a two-berth with the flexibility to act as an occasional four-berth.

The galley looks really striking with its new black and white scheme and angular design. It has three large drawers, complete with central locking, while the burners-in-line layout of the hob creates a decent amount of worktop, which is supplemented by a slot-in extension by the door. Opposite, the fridge is a giant 149-litre Thetford unit which self-selects its power source and alongside that is a pull-out pantry with space for six bottles.

Behind its sliding entrance door, the rear bathroom is quite superb. Its corner basin has double mirrors, while the huge wardrobe has twin doors – the right-hand one revealing XL-sized shelved storage, the left one hanging space with a 0.95m-long rail. There’s a good-sized separate shower, too, fitted with a new corner unit containing two storage areas for shampoo, etc, and a hanging rail for wet clothes.

There are plenty of much larger A-classes that don’t have the feeling of space offered by this new Itineo – and few motorhomes of this ilk at this price level. Its styling – inside and out – may not suit the more conservative buyer but we reckon this is one of the stars of 2019.

If you enjoyed this review, you can read loads more like it in What Motorhome magazine. You can get a digital version of this latest issue of What Motorhome magazine here.