FEATURE
Free To Adventure Off-Grid
Winnebago’s ARKA gives RVers all-season access to the great outdoors, with room for the whole family.
By Darian Armer
Photos courtesy of Winnebago
How do you adventure?
The development team at Winnebago that created the ARKA asked consumers this question, and they took that feedback to heart.
The new Winnebago ARKA is an off-grid, all-season adventure truck and adds more options to the way RVers can adventure, while expanding Winnebago’s rugged RV portfolio. The newest addition to Winnebago’s Backcountry line, ARKA joins the Class C EKKO and the Class B Revel as an option for customers who want to go farther for longer.
“A lot of this started with Revel, which came into the market almost a decade ago. It has spurred a lot of different options for campers other than traditional motorhomes,” says Stefanie Whittington, senior product manager for Winnebago’s compact Class C and adventure platforms. “There was an emerging subculture of these more rugged backcountry platforms, custom builders doing vans and catering to a demographic doing something different that wasn’t represented in the mainstream. Thus, was born the Revel and this step into adventure vans.”
Giving Customers More Freedom
Whittington says the ARKA is the latest answer for customers seeking a different camping experience.
“As Revel became what it was, we transitioned to this new option for customers not drawn to a traditional RV,” she says. “All of a sudden, Revel was here and it was an open door to freedom, whether someone wanted to be off-road or just free. We started to think, maybe there is something to this. Maybe people do want different experiences. There is a group of people excited to drive to dirt and camp out on that dirt.”
Whether traveling to public lands, Bureau of Land Management sites or even around town, owners have all of their amenities with them.
“It opened up this idea of being really unrestricted,” Whittington says. “This customer has an aspiration for themselves of the type of adventure they’re going to go on and what places they’re going to see.”
After the Revel came the EKKO — a unit that Whittington says was eye-opening.
“We brought in all of these things we learned from Revel but used the box instead of the van,” she says. “It gave us more space to take more gear. It was the chance to say, ‘Oh, I can have even more freedom.’ We saw this emergence of people who wanted to actually go backcountry.”
The EKKO provided the ability to be used day to day and flexibly, but addressed the need of those who wanted to go to the backcountry and to do the trail along the way. Whether with their snowmobiles, bicycles or ATVs, the EKKO has the space to transport gear to wherever people want to use it.
”We know our customers want to go there and be there for as long as they want, which is how we got into the idea of the ARKA,” Whittington says. “ARKA gives you more space to be somewhere longer, with bigger power and water capacities. When we think about backcountry, we quite literally think of freedom. Freedom to do the adventures you want to do on your time. You don’t have to book a campground or a site. ARKA allows you to be flexible and pivot when you want to go with the flow or wherever the wind takes you.”
With the ARKA, campers don’t have to worry as quickly about refilling propane, accessing dump stations, needing water or recharging batteries.
“If we take away logistics, then they get to focus on the adventure,” Whittington says. “Whether off a gravel road or an actual rated trail, ARKA exemplifies the idea of ‘go where you want and be there as long as you want to be there.’”
Developing Something New
When it comes to product development, Winnebago considers its consumers’ needs, she says, and then plans their products around that.
“Each of our teams can specialize around that. From luxury touring to backcountry, we’re talking about different requirements of customers and thinking of it from a consumer lens and not just a product lens,” she says. “That way a customer can do what they want to do, how they want to do it, where they want to do it.”
For every product they build, Whittington says they go through several iterations.
“There is so much ideating and revising. We’ll realize we’re going in a wrong direction, so then we pivot and do something else,” Whittington says. “We’ve been in development with ARKA for a couple of years now. We’ve spent hours and hours workshopping something worth building.”
But the ARKA is built on more than just brainstorming. Whittington says they took feedback from the many rallies, industry events and campgrounds she and her team spent time at.
“We were spending time with people doing the things we thought the people using our products would want to do,” she says.
Whittington took it one step further, taking a rough prototype of ARKA, unbranded and unstamped, to the Overland Expo to see what potential users thought.
“As people were walking by, they would say, ‘Really cool rig.’ I would ask, ‘Yeah? What do you think? How do you adventure?’ It was an opportunity to have those direct customer feedback points,” she says. “I was out talking to customers and participating with them.”
After that experience, she spent another four weeks in the rig and broke it.
Which, she says, was the point.
“We wanted to find the limit. Reengineer it. Take it back. Reengineer it. We did that until we could say, ‘We’re ready,’” Whittington says. “There are intentional features not just built in because we think it’s something people will care about. We know they will care about it. Being in that space with our customers let us see something was missing there. ARKA is a way to deliver something new at a new value.”
Currently there isn’t much on the market similar to the ARKA. That’s something Whittington says Winnebago loves to dive into.
“Yes, we serve a broader customer base as well, but because of that it allows a couple things to align perfectly,” she says. “We have the platform to do the things, the support to back it and a price point that is accessible to people.
“ARKA is everything you need and nothing that you don’t.”
ARKA provides everything a customer needs from day one to go out and start camping, Whittington says. It also offers the ability for a customer to modify it to their needs.
“We designed it to be used almost as a playground. It’s a fantastic baseline with everything you need, with the ability to turn it into a custom adventure truck,” she says. “You can configure gear rack space to fit winter gear, or whatever that looks like. There is so much intentional mod-ready space in the ARKA.”
While customers can go to a boutique builder if they’re willing to pay a much higher price point, Whittington says the ARKA offers the best of both worlds.
“Again, you can take it from day one and go have a blast, but you can also have a heck of a time turning this thing into the apocalypse-ready rig you want,” she says.
Whittington was happy to see Winnebago move into the space, noting that pioneering in areas you don’t see others in is something Winnebago is good at.
”You’ve got this phenomenal culture of adventurers and overlanders who are like, ‘You see us. You see what no one else is seeing in this.’ Having that feedback and validation just legitimizes the need,” she says. “People are asking for these types of builds, so we said, ‘Here you are.’ It’s a part of the market where Winnebago wants to sit.”
Room for Everyone & Everything
Dealers have responded with excitement about the ARKA and the growth of the backcountry space.
“It’s the natural next evolution. It’s a more ruggedized build with more space, storage and sleeping capacity,” she says.
That space, storage and sleeping capacity allows for another unusual element in the ARKA: The ability to bring the whole crew along.
“We don’t necessarily think of it as a family coach, but it’s one of the best built family trucks, with six belts and the best riding opportunities for a family,” she says. “On top of that, it has unbelievable capacities. When you think about [what a] family needs, there are four to five people who are going to take showers, so refilling water becomes a concern. With ARKA’s capacities, you can have the showers without having to go back into town to refill.”
It also provides configurable sleeping space, with the ability to have twin beds, a queen or king in the front cap, and a convertible dinette that can be a bed as well.
“As you move around the living space, you’ve got fantastic dedicated lounge space that’s really flexible if you’ve got people moving around,” Whittington says. “There’s enough room to stay out of the cooking space and for everyone to move around and have their own zones. I think that’s really unique.”
With personal experience as someone who has camped for a long time, Whittington says she knows the trade-offs when you camp in a smaller space.
“When you start camping in ARKA it’s like ‘dang, I’ve got space for everything. Even all my people.’ It’s built for group travel situations,” she says.
“ARKA opens up a whole new demographic of buyers. That’s why and who we did it for. It will be fun to see owners get in these units and out on their adventures.”
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