What's the difference?
Cub Campers is Australia’s oldest camper-trailer manufacturer and one of the oldest businesses in the caravan and camping industry, having just celebrated 50 years of operation in 2018.
The company can lay claim to inventing the soft-floor camper trailer, pioneering the rear-fold and championing off-road campers when everyone else was concerned with the on-road market. Amongst all that, though, it was late to the game when it comes to forward-fold campers, not releasing the Frontier until early in 2016, well after the flood of Chinese manufactured versions became immensely popular. So why did Cub wait so long and was it worth it?
Is there a class of vehicle more overlooked in Australia than the humble light van?
While the pragmatic and often hatchback-based small van is dwarfed in size and sales by the popular ute as the commercial vehicle of choice here, the case is completely reversed in Europe, where light commercial vans dominate city streets, favoured for their compact nature and relative fuel efficiency.
What is it about Australia which makes the ute more successful? Is it just our history of locally producing them? Do you really even need one, or are the Europeans on to something?
I spent a week reacquainting myself with the freshly facelifted 2025 Peugeot Partner to find out.
All in all, the Frontier is the best forward-fold camper on the market, although it is also the most expensive. If you were making a buying decision purely based on features, you’d probably look elsewhere, but if you are prepared to pay a little more because this camper-trailer is Australian made, you get a very functional camper that’s easy to set up, reliable, strong and light.
It might not be the most modern looking or feeling small van, but amongst its competitors, the Partner stands out for its relative value and load-lugging capabilities.
It’s somewhat fun to drive but now feels a bit plain on the inside, and could benefit from a few extra options and features to make it more comfortable and maybe even a little more customisable.
Still, I think the Peugeot Partner will fit the needs of many primarily city-based small businesses or tradies who want to work out of a compact and easy-to-drive van instead of an unwieldy and often overkill dual-cab ute.