Here’s A Look Inside The Winnebago Revel, The 4×4 Camper That Costs As Much As House

Camper vans are a sizzling hot market right now. Even when towables lost ground, camper vans got double-digit gains. Some of these vans cater to those who want to take their campers out into the wilderness. The 2023 Winnebago 4×4 Revel promises to take you just about anywhere in luxury. I love it, but its $210,000 base price gives me pause. Here’s what I mean.

Winnebago has been on a roll lately. The Hike 100 travel trailer is an adorable wonder with some legitimate off-road capabilities. The eRV2, while imperfect, is a window into an electric future of camper vans. Winnebago has even teamed up with Adventure Wagon to make a camper van with a fluid floorplan. Since 2017, Winnebago has also been selling the Revel, a camper van that the company says is “a true 4X4 RV designed to take you to places no other Winnebago motorhome has gone before.” I got to tour the latest version at the 2023 Florida RV SuperShow and I loved what I saw.

Not The Winnebago You’re Used To

Winnebago has a long history of selling quality campers for an affordable price. As I’ve written about before, one of Winnebago’s claims to fame was slicing costs by adopting car manufacturing methods into camper building. Winnebago’s first motorhomes left the factory in 1967. The company says its first F-17 and F-19 motorhomes had a huge advantage over the competition back in the day because they were no longer than a station wagon and half of the price of the competition.

Over the decades, Winnebago has built up a reputation for affordable, quality campers. However, the brand is not afraid to dip into the luxury RV space as well. When I went to the RV Open House in Indiana, I toured pretty lavish Winnebago Class A motorhomes with prices hanging around half a million dollars.

The Revel is among these luxury rigs, and back in 2017, publications like Curbed called it “not your grandfather’s RV.”

The 2023 Winnebago 4×4 Revel 44E

As of right now, Winnebago is selling just one floorplan for its off-road camper van; it’s called the 44E. At the heart of the Revel is a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 2500 with a high roof and a 144-inch wheelbase.

One of Winnebago’s bigger selling points for this van is that it features a part-time four-wheel-drive system with a low-range selector. Under the hood sits a 3.0-liter V6 turbodiesel making 188 HP and 325 lb-ft torque. In High, the four-wheel-drive system sends 35 percent torque to the front axle. With the low range engaged, it’s a 50 percent split between the axles. There are no lockers, but the van uses an off-road traction control and stability control system to apply brakes to wheels without traction. I have a similar system in my Volkswagen Touareg and it’s shocking how effective they can be.

This powertrain is somewhat unique for now. For the 2023 model year, Mercedes dropped the V6 and the 4×4 system. The 2023 Sprinter sports a 2.0-liter diesel four making 211 HP and 332 lb-ft torque. In the 4×4 system’s place is an all-wheel-drive system. There’s no low range here, but Mercedes-Benz says that the system can send up to 50 percent of available torque to the front wheels. The 2023 Winnebago Revels still have the older powertrain and it’s unclear when the camper will change over to the smaller engine and AWD.

Mercedes sells the base vans for $59,350. Winnebago doesn’t say how much it gets Sprinters for, but there’s a chunk of the Revel’s $210,292 base price right there.

Continuing around the exterior, Winnebago adds BF Goodrich KO2 all-terrain tires, a powered awning, and a ladder to the roof. Up there, you’ll find a roof rack with clearance lights up front, two solar panels adding up to 215 watts, and the van’s air-conditioner. You can use the rack to mount gear like kayaks or similar.

At the show, Winnebago had another Revel with a few extra bits to show what you could do with one of these. On that van, the hood was covered in bedliner and the roof rack had an off-road light bar.

The doors of that one also got the bedliner and there were two storage cases on the roof. These made the van look more rugged, but it should be noted that these don’t have any substantial underbody protection. I’m also not entirely sure about the benefit of covering your hood in bedliner.

I would have loved to see something like a front skid plate at the very least.

A Functional Interior

The interior of this van is definitely more functional than beautiful. Up front, you get a driver and passenger seat that spin around to face the dinette, making a living room of sorts.

Next to the dinette is a small galley kitchen. Cooking is handled by a portable induction cooktop. There’s a small refrigerator onboard and a sink on the galley’s laminate counter.

Across from that is a small wet bath with a 5-gallon cassette toilet and shower. I wasn’t able to go in here, but I can say that this shower would definitely be a tight fit if you’re a taller or larger person. The van holds 21 gallons of fresh water and 21 gallons of waste water.

Moving back from there is the combination bedroom and garage. Another feature that Winnebago advertises here is the power lift bed system. As the name suggests, your bed is connected to a lift system that is able to lift the bed up to the ceiling, providing you with a small garage with tie-downs for whatever you can fit back there. The Winnebago’s floor is rubberized so putting something dirty back there wouldn’t ruin your day.

Other interior bits include RAM track rails to securely attach gear in the van, screens for the doors, and a bamboo rack that turns the wet bath into a closet. Powering all of this is a 320 Ah lithium-ion battery that is charged either by the solar panels or by shore power or the van’s second alternator. In terms of heating, the camper has a heater that feeds from the van’s tank of diesel. The water heater also drinks diesel.

Quality

Overall, I like the interior layout and the power bed seems to be really nifty. However, the interior is where I started to struggle with the price. The quality of the materials in there didn’t feel great and the color choices were also confusing. For example, the dinette bench was blue and white while the van’s seats were black leather. The bench seemed like an afterthought; like someone ran out of time and just put something there.

For materials like the counters, cabinets, and the walls of the bathroom, they all felt like a bad Chicago pothole could loosen them or perhaps an accident loading your bicycle could put a hole through something. This is to say that the interior felt like it would be at home in the cheapest trailers on the market, not a luxury van. The water connections are also sort of weird as they’re inside, requiring you to leave the door unlatched.

As it turns out, I’m not alone. There are seven owner reviews on RV Insider, most of them praise the van’s off-road capabilities, but note that the quality may not be up to par for the price. One reviewer said that their 2021 Revel was “the biggest let down.” For comparison, if you have $200,681 laying around, you can get an Airstream Interstate 19. That van feels like a luxury apartment inside and you still get a high-roof Mercedes-Benz Sprinter with the V6 turbodiesel, but rear-wheel-drive.

The Competition

In terms of competition, the Winnebago goes up against known names in the off-road van world like Sportsmobile. That company will sell you a 4×4 Sprinter camper van for about the same price, if not cheaper. Another Winnebago selling point is that this is an off-road camper van that you can get serviced and the company’s large dealer network.

I do love the idea of the 2023 Winnebago 4×4 Revel 44E. It’s a camper van with four-wheel-drive sold by a household name! But at its starting price of $210,292, it seems that the interior isn’t quite there. That said, I’d love to drive one and see how it wheels.

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