Destination Wonder Caravan

As André van Helsdingen the designer and builder of the new Destination Wonder caravan explains, “The Wonder is not about camping but about having a holiday in style!” This eight-meter luxury caravan, with its fully independent suspension and twin oversized shock absorbers, is fully capable of taking you on any reasonable gravel road in the country.

- Richard Van Ryneveld

A ctually, when I fetched the Destination Wonder for my more-than-a-thousand kilometre and 10-day camping trip André said, “Take it on any grond pad you like!” Just in case someone attempts Van Zyl’s Pass with his new Wonder, I thought I had better add the word ‘reasonable’ to his statement.

André van Helsdingen is well known in the boat building industry in Gauteng. He has taken his years of experience into his latest venture of building luxury caravans. Walking around the state-ofthe-art factory he filled me in on his thinking behind the new Destination Wonder. “With my boat building experience I wanted to build a yacht for a round-the-world cruise?” he said with a smile. On planning the building of the boat André continued, “I learnt that there is nothing better for the bulkhead walls than PVC Core material combined with fibreglass.” He went on to explain why he used this material in the new Destination Wonder.

“The advantage of using this material is the fact that the core itself has structural integrity. Not mere space like polystyrene. It also allows the Destination factory to incorporate the caravan’s fibreglass process without needing glue. This leads to lightness and incredible stability of the caravan.” I can attest to this as I ran into gale-force winds near Villiers on the N3. That eightmetre caravan handled like a dream.