A brand new tenting trailer that is stuffed with surprises, the 2026 Low Tow from Australia’s Prattline RV seems to be at first to be as model, spanking new and cutting-edge as a number of the newest all-electric trailers developed in Silicon Valley. However it’s really a contemporary redux of a nameplate that dates again over half a century. The trailer nonetheless seems to be so contemporary and distinctive as we speak, we are able to solely think about how of us will need to have appeared on the unique prefer it floated to Earth from a far-flung planet in an undiscovered galaxy.
“All the things outdated is new once more.” It is a phrase observers are sometimes compelled to repeat when seeing a brand new product with signature operational or design options much like these seen years, many years, even centuries earlier. Like the best way electrical autos – motorized carriages, to be particular – beat ICE autos to a Nineteenth century existence practically 200 years earlier than trendy EVs began gaining actual momentum within the automotive business.
After all, nobody would say a contemporary EV is the precise equal of an early-Nineteenth century motorized carriage – there’s loads of inevitable evolution and innovation that occur, even when common ideas and classes are rehashed.
The ‘outdated is new once more’ mentality is especially apt when trying on the RV business, the place basic ideas like teardrop trailers, Westy-like pop-up camper vans, and molded fiberglass trailers and truck campers both persist in recognition via the many years, evolving with new options and supplies, or bear intervals of innovation, dormancy and revival.
As with EVs, and the motor and battery tech underpinning them, that does not imply trendy innovation is absent. Newer evolutions of outdated RV ideas typically apply the most recent supplies, manufacturing strategies and options to enhance upon age-old paradigms, like what number of teardrop trailers have moved previous aluminum skinned wooden on to rot-free zero-wood constructions and hardened, ruggedized off-road specs.
The brand new Prattline Low Tow is the epitome of a revived and improved innovation from generations previous. After we first occurred upon it, we thought it was born from the rising modern pattern of power-lifting hard-sided trailers, a mode that is just lately grow to be one thing of a favourite for production and concept caravan designs constructed to reimagine caravanning with the latest expertise. Because it seems, although, the Low Tow has a lot deeper roots and is a contemporary reimagining of a product courting again effectively into the twentieth century.
Prattline is likely one of the unique innovators of telescopic hard-sided trailer design and an Australian pioneer within the class. Whereas it may’t declare to be the very first on this planet – that seems to be the American Hi-Lo camping trailer, so far as we are able to inform – it was one of many well-known producers that left an enormous impression throughout its time available on the market.
Prattline was based by Dick Pratt in 1957, across the similar time Hello-Lo was getting up and operating throughout the Pacific and Alaskan Campers was growing a telescopic hard-sided truck camper. Prattline labored in additional typical camper designs till someday across the 60s/early 70s when it developed the primary Low Tow.
Like the unique Hello-Lo trailers, the Low Tow (to not be confused with the Tow Low, an American Hello-Lo competitor of the period from Ratcliff Industries) was a two-shell design with an higher shell that nested neatly over the decrease shell to drop heart of gravity, enhance aerodynamics and supply extra versatile storage potential. The higher shell lifted with a handbook hydraulics crank to full-height tenting type.
Prattline offered numerous iterations of Low Tow trailer for a number of many years into the Nineties earlier than going out of enterprise.
Prattline RV
Now, a small group of RV business professionals has revived the Prattline title and reinvented the Low Tow design with trendy expertise. As a substitute of a gradual hydraulic crank working its roof, the brand new 22.7-ft (6.9-m) Low Tow prototype operates immediately on the punch of a button, electrical actuators at every nook elevating the higher shell into full 9.3-foot (2.8-m) base camp peak. That then opens up 6.2 toes (193 cm) of standing room inside.
Throughout the drive, the caravan lowers right down to a peak of 6.9 toes (2.1 m), which remains to be pretty excessive and sure a bit taller than the tow automobile. However that is largely as a result of Prattline has constructed the brand new Low Tow for off-road journey, planting it on a high-clearance tapered galvanized-steel chassis. It then secures a 2,600-kg dual-shock unbiased coil suspension between that body and every 16-in alloy wheel and finishes off with a pair of 265/75 R16 Goodride radial mud-terrain gentle truck tires and 12-in electrical brakes.
Prattline RV
The Low Tow physique is formed by a vacuum-bonded fiberglass body, its sidewalls secured along with a single-piece roof and an anti-rot honeycomb ground. Instead of the two-piece Dutch door on Low Tows of outdated, the all-new mannequin encompasses a intelligent sliding dual-height design that closes neatly whether or not the trailer is about to drive or camp peak.
The Low Tow’s distinctive form was derived from previous Low Tow fashions. Not all Low Tows got here in that exact form, but it surely was outstanding in the course of the nameplate’s unique decades-long run, as evidenced by most of the pictures and movies we have been capable of monitor down of older fashions. The form offers the trailer a curvaceous nostril that seems extra aerodynamic than the vertical face a boxier design would create, and it provides to the higher inside quantity of the trailer compared to partitions rising straight up from the decrease half.
Prattline RV
The crimson/orange/yellow stripes are one other nod to Low Tow heritage and match completely with the newly ruggedized design, bringing to thoughts the three-stripe patterns worn by rugged Ford and Toyota TRD off-roaders within the Seventies/80s via to as we speak.
An addition we’ve not seen on basic Low Tows is the slide-out exterior galley. This unit works naturally with the 2026 Low Tow’s extra rugged, off-road design as a standard aspect of Australian off-road trailers basically. It comes properly geared up with a four-burner fuel range, sink with dual-level drying rack, and extendable worktop.
Prattline RV
That does not imply you’ll be able to’t escape chilly or moist climate and cook dinner meals inside, although. The Low Tow prototype additionally features a smooth indoor nook kitchen with slim rectangular sink, dual-burner induction cooktop and 12-V compressor fridge.
The inside relies round a 78 x 59-in (200 x 150-cm) island mattress with high-density foam mattress. The vis-a-vis dinette simply previous the foot of the mattress can convert to create a second mattress. A moist tub completes the ground plan, however as an alternative of mimicking the telescopic arduous partitions of the outside design, the lavatory compartment makes use of a cloth higher physique that collapses when decreasing the roof.
Prattline RV
The ultimate aspect of the Low Tow’s modernization program comes within the type of a strong off-grid electrical and multimedia package deal. That is grounded in a 600-Ah LFP battery supported by 600 watts of photo voltaic and a 2,000-W inverter switching DC present into the AC a lot extra helpful for on a regular basis home equipment and gizmos. Wired up in strategic components of the cabin are a 24-in sensible TV with HD antenna, stereo head unit with audio system, and a number of followers.
Different options that fill out the preliminary spec sheet embody a reverse-cycle A/C-heating system, water heater, 80-L contemporary and grey water tanks, and an outside bathe.
Prattline RV
Prattline tells us it has been growing the Low Tow, the clear technical spotlight of a brand new lineup that additionally consists of two fixed-height caravans, for the previous two years. It is nonetheless finalizing the manufacturing spec, so a number of the numbers talked about may change, however has been busily displaying the prototype at numerous RV reveals round Australia. It is also been taking preorders for the AU$79,990 (approx. US$55,000) trailer, in addition to its different fashions.
Whereas it feels a bit early to speak about internationalization for a brand-new startup in an Australian RV business that is been a bumpy rollercoaster of recent improvements and bankrupt manufacturers, Prattline does have its sights on eventual growth into international markets like Europe and the US.
Supply: Prattline RV
