I recently spent a week living out of an Ezytrail Ceduna 13 MK3 and while it’s marketed as more of a hybrid than a full-size van, it has to be said that they’ve crammed a whole bunch of comfort and practicality into thirteen short feet.
Look, you can call this a hybrid if you want – it has an external kitchen and there is a bit of set-up involved – but let’s be honest here. It’s full height, has a freaking king-size bed, an internal shower and bathroom, more interior lighting than a Tay-Tay concert, enough storage for a round-`Straya trip, and has more space than a Sydney studio apartment.
The Ezytrail Ceduna 13 also tips the scales at a portly 2.5-ish tonne (admittedly, with 240L of water onboard), so yeah, calling it a hybrid seems somehow…inaccurate.
However, it also rings in below 60 gorillas, which has to put it up there as one of the best bang-for-buck trailers on the market. If you’re planning a big lap or are looking to jump from your old rear-fold camper to something bigger and comfier, I honestly reckon these need to be on your shortlist.
Let me explain why.
How’s it tow?
As our tow pig, we were using a brand spanking Isuzu MU-X. As mentioned, the Ezytrail Ceduna 13 weighs north of 2,000kg, so it was definitely noticeable being lugged along in the rearview, but we still had no trouble maintaining the speed limit up hills or keeping up with traffic in the `burbs.
One good thing was that the bed is mounted towards the rear of the van, so you’re not inclined to place a lot of weight behind the axle. The downside, of course, is that you tend to load up the front half of the trailer, increasing ball weight. Certainly not a deal breaker, but something to be aware of, especially for those tow vehicles with stock suspension like ours.
All in all, I can’t say the Ezytrail Ceduna 13 towed badly by any stretch. The full-height frontal profile was noticeable when driving into a headwind, much like the side profile made itself known in a crosswind, but nothing that was over the top or made me feel at all uncomfortable.
The Kenda Klever tyres look the part and gave us no problems with straight line tracking or maintaining grip off-road, and the independent Pedders suspension and Bigfoot 12in brakes handled the bounce and the pull-up, respectively, without a drama, sheep-farmer.
Yeah, it’s a fair chunk of weight, especially for a hybrid, but it’s well-hidden and easy to live with. Fuel economy was up around the 18L/100km mark, but that was not babying the tow rig at all, and more reasonable figures could be achieved if you’re not a devil-may-care hoon like I may or may not be.
Set-up and pull-down
As you’d expect, the Ezytrail Ceduna 13 is not a difficult rig to get into relaxation mode. Unhitch (if required), drop the stabiliser legs, drop the twin spare carriers, fold out the bed section (the four panels take about 30 seconds total), climb in and fold out the bed. About three minutes after sliding the transmission into park you’re well and truly ready to crack open your first Froth Whitlam and set the tone for the evening.
The rear bed section is a do-it-once-and-you’ve-done-it-a-hundred-times situation and from there you can dial in your own level of convenience. The passenger-side fridge slide is massive, you’d need a fridge the size of a Troopy to not fit on there, and there’s even a handy storage box mounted to the back of the slide for as yet uncooled beers or non-perishable foods.
Speaking of food, there are twin pantries that have a fantastic amount of space, and the generous four-burner and sink kitchen unit is readily accessible and straightforward to kick into action.
An electric cassette awning is as easy to use as a single button-push and comes with attachable walls should you want a little more privacy or are parked up for a few days in heavy weather.
The Ezytrail Ceduna 13 is not what you’d call fancy-pants, but basic is often better than complex and it’s about as hassle free as you can imagine.
Things we like about the Ezytrail Ceduna 13 MK3
Strap yourself in because there’s a fair bit to cover on the Ezytrail Ceduna 13 here.
Starting underneath, the frame is best described as sturdy. It’s a beefy F5 classified chassis and drawbar and comes with a lifetime warranty. There are twin 120L water tanks – one for the shower/bathroom and one for the taps. After a week of camping, we’d come pretty close to using the 120L of the latter up, which I reckon is fair economy and capacity. Hitching up is via an ARK XO 3500kg-rated unit, which gave us exactly zero problems, so top marks there too.
The Ezytrail Ceduna 13 has storage for twin gas bottles, and in a nifty inclusion, you can change the mounting brackets to suit the size of your canister, which I thought was a tops idea. While we’re on the subject of storage, there’s a metric buttload of it. The gas/tool box out front, the pole/annex box slightly higher up, the full-width locker that’s above the (huge) fridge slide, the driver-side slide for a chuck box or second freezer – and that’s just the first third of the van-length. I’m honestly struggling to think of something you’d have to leave at home when taking this thing out on a trip. The backhoe, maybe?
But wait, there’s more…
On the electrical side of things, there’s a tidy 400W of solar on the roof and 240A available from a pair of lithium batteries. Projecta provide the DC-DC, 2000W inverter and the Intelli-RV power management system. There are numerous 12V plugs and USBs dotted inside and out on the Ceduna and the TV is able to be mounted inside or externally on the provided brackets, so you’ll never have to miss another episode of MAFS, you sick puppy you.
There’s also an internal Anderson plug for mounting an upright fridge inside, and the Ezytrail Ceduna 13 has more storage space than a B-Double. The Truma reverse cycle air-con can be run off a gennie or shore power, but realistically, we didn’t need it. Even on 30deg. nights, the twin internal fans did an excellent job of keeping us cool, so no complaints there.
The bathroom (connected to an 80L gray water tank) was a really nice inclusion and unexpected on such a small van, and there’s also an external shower and room able to be mounted to the driver side of the trailer, which you may prefer.
The electric awning, kitchen and annexe walls were all extremely well thought out and easy to use, which has also been said about me in the past, but I digress…
Things we’d change about the Ezytrail Ceduna 13 MK3
As with just about any van, the Ezytrail Ceduna 13 is not all rainbows and newborn kittens. There are a few aspects of the Ezytrail Ceduna MK13 that could be tweaked for better/easier liveability. For example: the levelling legs can take a fair amount of fiddling with to get the van sitting square on an uneven site – however this would be easily sorted with a set of load-levelling ramps.
The kitchen gas hob requires a PHD in contortionism to reach – relocating it somewhere more accessible shouldn’t be difficult though. Folding out the bed panels does require a bit of force to lift the rear wall into place. Might be worth checking into if your salad days are behind you and your tennis elbow is prone to flaring up.
Again, these aren’t major problems, more just niggles that are largely solvable with a little personalisation. For the price point of the Ezytrail Ceduna 13, I reckon having to make a few little tweaks is honestly not that big of a deal, but it’s worth letting you know about them.
If I was wearing my ultra-picky hat, I’d probably mention the door handles and locks may not give decades of faultless service and as much as I enjoyed the electric fold-out step into the van, it’d likely be the first thing to suffer damage if any serious off-road trip was undertaken.
Pro trip:
Make sure the drawers in the kitchen are fully closed before folding it away or the drawer may partially slide open and prevent you from pulling the kitchen back out… I’d really love to blame the van for that one but yeah, physics is hard.
Weirdly, we counted no less than 19 internal lights. I guess you can never have too many, but this seemed somewhat excessive. Having them all on made the interior roughly as bright as the surface of the sun, but if you’re into welding without a mask this may be a huge win for you.
One last thing, and it’s probably more of a personal preference than a fault, but I would have liked an internal cooking hob for quick roadside cuppas or morning coffees in the Ezytrail Ceduna 13. It’s available in the 15-foot Ceduna (which you have to toss up as potentially being worth the extra few grand – but that’s a personal decision I’ll leave with you), and honestly you could sort it with a cheapo gas cooker for a few bucks, but I’ll take my hat off now, maybe pop a Mylanta and compose myself.
Long-term ownership
With the context of the relatively low price, the Ezytrail Ceduna 13 stacks up. It packs a hell of a lot into a short van-length, and there’s nothing really that sticks out as being absolutely heinous. The fact that this is the third iteration of the model signifies that Ezytrail have not sat on their hands when it comes to refinement.
Things like the upgraded (over the previous models) awning, the honestly excellent-to-use kitchen and even smaller touches like the electrical cable being run through flexible-protectors all suggest a high-quality caravan that will handle a big lap or years of smaller trips without too much fuss.
In fact, we met a bloke named Pat who was taking his family on an extended trip around the country in his previous Mk2 model, and he couldn’t have been happier with his Ceduna. He reckoned he’d had no dramas and after crawling all over the Mk3 noticed a few changes that he’d be making to his one at their next stop.
The Ezytrail Ceduna 13 is a hell of a good option for the money. But don’t take my word for it. Duck down to your local Ezytrail dealer and find out for yourself.
