Dirt Wheels – January, 1993
4×4 Luxury Coach Dune-Shredding Motorhome; Dirt Wheels-Motorhome Section (Mission Hills, CA); January 1993
Camping at Comp Hill in style!
Motorhomes are certainly the most luxurious means for going off-road or to the races. After a hard day of riding nothing can beat a hot shower, a juicy steak and then hitting the sack in air-conditioned comfort. At the end of the weekend these things seem even nicer when you can do them at the same time someone else is up front driving the rig back home – and, unlike a fifth-wheel trailer, the whole gang can hang out together with the driver.
However, motorhomes somehow seem just a little too fragile for the rigors of actually going off-road for any distance. They seem more suited to parking on a level, paved pad, in some sterile Yogi Bear trailer park with a candy machine and shuffleboard. A big motorhome, hopelessly buried in the sand at Pismo Beach – with the tide rising up to the windows – is a miserable scenario, one that businessman Ray Novelli, a stockholder in the Revcon Motorcoach Corp., vowed never to undergo again. To alleviate that fear he contracted Revcon to build a four-wheel-drive motorhome for him. The finished vehicle performed so well that Ray, like the guy in the Remington shaver ads, bought the company: “Rather than just park along the side of the road, I can park right on top of a sand dune. I’ve had the Revcon all over Glamis.”
Ray Novelli grew weary of getting his last motorhome stuck in the sand at Pismo and Glamis; this baby never gets stuck. Razorback dunes and air time are no no’s, but everything else is fair game.
Think of the most remote camping spot you’ve ever been to. Then picture camping there in absolute luxury.
RACE IT IN BAJA?
However, this amazing scenario gets even wilder. With Some heavy duty suspension mods (which will become standard on all the production units), Ray actually plans to run the Baja 100. “If the big trucks can do it, we can,” Ray says. “The Revcon isn’t that much wider – but we won’t be going terrifically fast, and when we finish, everybody else will be probably be back home!” Regardless of this overall finish position, Ray can be secure in the knowledge that he will be first in his class: Sixteen-Thousand-Pound Four-Wheel Drive Vehicles with Shower.
Says Ray, “I have a hand-held Global Positioning System, which locks onto five orbiting satellites and gives you your longitude, latitude, altitude and an ETA at your destination. So I’ve been all over Mexico and even pulled out tow trucks pulling out Baja 1000 race cars.”
What’s the most remote location Ray has been in the “Goliath,” as he calls it? Once we ended up 150 miles south of San Felipe, on the east coast of Baja California [Mexico]. We were more than 100 miles form the nearest paved road, but we’ve never once been stuck or had to winch our way out.”
The Revcon is available with 12,000-pound winch and Ray gets about 400 miles per tank of gas with the 500-hp, 454 Chevy V8 engine. Ground clearance is way up there at 21 inches and the 44″x16.5″ Cepek tires are rated at ten-ply.
THE “BUDGET” MODEL
Realizing that the $180,000 price tag on the Revcon 4×4 might be a little steep for some folks, Ray’s company, Off Road Motorcoaches, is currently working on a scaled-down version, the Cross-Country 6×4, and it should be hitting the Glamis dunes before the season is over. Using Ford Crew Cab 4×4 with a 460-cubic-inch engine as a basis, this Class C motorhome will have two queen-size beds (one over the cab) and tandem rear axles; the rear or “drag axle” will not drive and will only provide stability. In addition to the full motorhome in the rear area, the front cab will still seat four comfortably. This baby will go for $64,000, and will certainly raise some eyebrows racing up Comp Hill.
For more info about either vehicle, contact Off Road Motorcoaches at (714) 474-0404. (Thanks to our photo riders, Greg Benbow and Lee Dunstan)