Cub Campers Weekender 2021 review

The diminutive Cub Weekender adds 3.6m to the length of your vehicle when you’re towing and is only 1.4m high and 1.7m wide. The main body measures 2.2m closed but opens up to a little more than 4.4m, including the 2.23m x 1.7m of floor space that’s created when you’re at camp. It’s actually the same body as the more off-road-focused Explorer and Brumby campers, but with a shorter drawer bar and no front-storage box. 

As it’s designed to be towed behind small vehicles and little SUVs, the Weekender is light – 600kg at tare, depending on the options you choose. 

With an ATM of 900kg the camper can carry up to 300kg of gear, and the light 60kg ball weight shouldn’t be a problem for any vehicle. 

The rear-fold design camper has always been popular for its practicality. Once open, the camper has an off-ground, level and firm area to spread out into. People variously use it for indoor dining, sleeping kids, storing extra camp gear or as the place to stand up while getting dressed for the day. Although it’s only a small space in this little camper, it’s still great. 

Cub’s quick awning is standard fitment on the Aussie-made tents, which also adds more undercover space. There are plenty of canvas upgrade options, though, so you could fully enclose the area if you really needed to. 

There’s a little bit of storage under the bed; just enough for a weekend’s worth of stuff. One problem, though, is that the poles for the awning store diagonally across the under-bed area, effectively dividing it into two triangles of space. That will make it awkward to pack, as you can’t slide things in neatly. Of course, you could probably store the poles on top of the bed, but that’s not a very elegant solution. 

This is a really easy camper trailer to tow because it is so light, and also because its underbody components punch above its weight. Cub uses a simple ball hitch on this model, with a mechanical override braking system, rather than electric. It means that owners don’t need to get an electric brake controller fitted to their, often, smaller vehicles. And almost any car with a towbar could tow it. 

It rides lower than many other campers, because of its on-road bias, so a bigger tow-ball drop than standard is useful if you drive a modern 4WD like the Ford Ranger. 

Eye-to-eye leaf springs damp the ride on, or slightly off, the road and everything underneath is neat and well protected – both the water tank and water-pump assembly have stone guards. Impressively, the little camper features disc brakes, which pull up the trailer nice and smoothly and will perform well under strain. 

Although the chassis is painted and seems well sealed, whatever Cub’s charging for galvanising the chassis will be worth it if you plan on keeping the trailer a long time. 

I’ve already mentioned the pole storage. Otherwise, Cub has an excellent reputation for reliability and is very committed to building high-quality trailers in Australia.