Growing up, my family had a small Winnebago. At that time, “Winnies” seemed to be synonymous with RVs. Similar to Q-tips being the commonly accepted reference to cotton swabs, people just referred to all RVs as Winnies. Winnebago might not have the most exciting line of camper vans, but they’re well-known and looked to be a logical starting point for us newbies.
We already knew that we wanted a smaller footprint – two bipeds and two small furbabies do not require a lot of space. Looking at Winnebago’s website and their camper vans, the Solis Pocket fit the bill:
- Just under 18 feet in length bumper-to-bumper
- Open floor plan
- Air conditioner and heater
Solis Pocket 36A
Could we have found the camper van at the first go? We started watching videos and reading more about it and the Ram ProMaster chassis. We ran into a problem: if we chose with this van, we would want the 36A floor plan, which has no bathroom.
The Solis Pocket 36A requires shore power to run the air conditioner and to power all but the 12V outlets in the cabin. That’s a problem. We wanted the battery-powered air conditioner for the dogs. So, we found a van with an air conditioner – that won’t work in most of our use cases. We also tend to prefer dispersed camping/boondocking over campsites. When forced to campsites, we prefer primitive ones. Unfortunately, this isn’t going to work.
Solis Pocket 36B
Now, we did see that there is the option to add a 5kWh lithium battery with the EcoFlow Power Kit Pro. Perhaps our problem is solved after all? Nope. This option is available exclusively for the 36B floorplan model. So, what’s the difference, you might ask? Well, the new 36B floorplan adds a rear bath to the Solis Pocket layout (and also brings a hot water heater to the van as well).
I can appreciate that for many this is a no-brainer: a bathroom! Hot water! But for us, we would prefer the living space than an entire wet bath. While Winnebago did a nice job keeping the open space by using the rear bath floorplan, the 36B loses the Murphy bed and the ability to use the rear doors as an extension of your living space. For us, these are trade-offs that simply wouldn’t justify the model for us.
Ram ProMaster
We also learned that the Ram ProMaster comes exclusively as a FWD. Although this may be perfectly fine for the majority of our anticipated driving (we definitely do not have any plans for technical off-roading), all of our vehicles for the last – I can’t even count how many – years have been AWD cars. We also intend to garage the camper van in an area that gets decent snowfall during the winter with uncertain plowing schedules.
Would the lack of AWD have been the death knell if the Solis Pocket otherwise met our needs? That is unclear. But for now, we knew we needed to keep looking for the right camper van for us.
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