Stealing Space

Paradise Motor Homes’ Free Time exudes refinement and features solid engineering

Paradise Motor Homes is well known for its innovative slide-out motorhome designs – mostly rigs that are around 24ft (7.3m) on the road and have a floor-space area considerably larger when parked.

However, some people prefer not to have a slide-out design for various reasons, but still want a Paradise motorhome. Others are also keen to have the latest Fiat Ducato as the base vehicle – something that wasn’t available in the Paradise line-up until very recently. Well, the fertile mind of Paradise proprietor Colin MacLean has resolved those issues and developed the aptly named Free Time motorhome. We’ll modestly claim a small part in the Fiat Ducato bit: when Colin asked our opinion of the Fiat, we responded, “Why not?” 

We should also point out that for three-pointed-star lovers, a similar design, the Inspiration, is also available with Mercedes underpinnings.

Look Smart

True to form, Colin opted to use the largest of the available turbo diesels in the Ducato range, the 115kW 3L 160 Multijet in the Free Time. Our review vehicle came with the six-speed manual gearshift but the Automatic is now standard in all vehicles, which will please many potential buyers. Although the Free Time has a length of 7.3m, the Ducato pushed it along without any problem at all. The hills and dales of the southern highlands of NSW proved no stretch for the output power or the general handling of the Ducato.

Featured in Motorhome World by Malcolm Street - Issue 21  Aug / Jul 2008