The Patriot range of camper trailers needs little to no introduction to anyone with anything more than a passing interest in camping.  They are widely considered the best soft floor camper trailer on the market and five consecutive 'Camper Trailer of the Year Awards' are a testament to their design and engineering excellence.  Our Patriot is our third camper trailer and the reasons for choosing the Patriot are many and varied but the main one was quality.  We had had a range of issues with our Chinese made camper trailers which you can read about here.

So the decision to buy a new trailer came after yet another frustrating trip up to the Turon River near Mudgee.  On the drive home, we decided we would put our trailer on the market and look for a new one with two criteria in mind, quality of manufacture and ease of use being the other.  After some research, we decided we liked the look of the Patriot and their brilliantly put together videos on YouTube reinforced the build quality and functionality we were looking for.  We then went to our local dealer, Off-Grid Outfitters in Smeaton Grange South West of Sydney for a look at the range.

We had a brief chat to the salesman and told him of our frustrations with our existing trailer and he offered to show us around the X1.  We accepted the offer and he went through the trailer from front to back, explaining all of the features along the way.  He even took the time to set-up the awning and tent and pointed out the little tips and tricks to help speed up the process and avoid rookie errors in the process.

We sat down at the table whilst he put together a quote based on the options we selected whilst we pondered how we could scrape together the money to get the deal on the move.  At the time there was a 5-month waiting list so all we needed to do was cough up five grand to get a spot in the queue and scrape the rest together in meantime.  OK, Drum roll please.... just under $60,000.00 was the number.  This wasn't a complete shock as Patriot advertise their prices on the website but we weren't sure how much our selected options would add to the base price of $49,990.00.

We drove home and crunched the numbers along the way and thought that if we could offload our existing camper trailer then we'd be able to get the rest sorted by the time it was delivered, so we rang Off-Grid Outfitters and placed an order.  We settled on the top of the range model at the time, the X1-GT.  We figured if we were going to buy the best then scrimping on a few bucks over the life of the trailer made no sense.  The X1-GT is no longer available but you could option up a new model to the same spec.  The GT came with the same features that we thought made sense at the time but with use, maybe not so much and we'll discuss those and the reasons why as the blog progresses.  So for the extra money, you get a BBQ swing away located in the man cave, the kids' room tent and awning extensions, the amazing REDARC TVMS and a few other bits and bobs that have for the moment escaped my memory.

We decided the number one option would be the Webasto diesel hot water system, this added a lazy 6K to the price which isn't cheap but knew it was something that we would never get around to fitting at a later date.  We'll talk about the Webasto through the course of the blog updates.  We also added the extended drawbar at just under four hundred bucks.  This allows us to fully open the rear door of the Prado without un-hitching the trailer, although depending on the angle of the vehicle we do occasionally have to remove the jockey wheel from its storage position.  The other advantage with the extended drawbar is that it makes the trailer slightly easier to reverse.  If you do tight single track stuff then maybe the extended draw isn't for you.

Next up was the Mickey Thompson tyre upgrade, for what we do this was a decision motivated purely by ego, they look great and I do not doubt that the standard tyres would do whatever we asked of them.  Our ego cost us just under $700 that day.  We then added two windbreak walls constructed out of the most expensive canvas on the planet, think six hundred dollars worth of expensive canvas.  We added a new Webber BabyQ even though we already had one that we use at home we didn't want to mess about each time we wanted to go away for a weekend, we just wanted to fill the fridge hook it up and go.  More on how that's not working for us later!

There is also the exorbitant $1250 pre-delivery fee and the usual government registration costs, $355.00 worth.

We did get a Lightbar and Rhino rack thrown in as part of sales promotion at the time, we sold the lightbar and fitted the rack to our 120 series Prado. 

So as mentioned we put our money down and the waiting game began.