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Junior Member
Join Date: Aug 2019
Posts: 6
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Dynamax Europa - New owner review
I’m not a regular on this site but will come here when doing any sort of research on RVs. The community here has been very helpful whenever we’ve looked for answers to random questions or sought more info on a specific coach. We recently purchased a Dynamax Europa and, since these are relatively new models, I figured I would provide an overview of our experience for anyone thinking about these coaches. I’ll say up front that I’m not an experienced RV owner. Nor am I particularly handy. Keep these in mind as I’m sure there’s a lot of ignorance in my comments below. This overview is really for someone newer to RVs (like us) and intended to describe our personal experience/thoughts, which I’m sure would be different for different people with different expectations and experience.
The Europa is our second RV. The first was a 2020 Tiffin 32SA, which we bought in late-2019 and sold in early-2021 for essentially the same as what we paid. On the Tiffin we had installed a rear track-bar, rear sway bar, rear Sumo springs, and a steering stabilizer. When we were seeking a replacement, we considered super Cs based on the F550/600 and Ram 5500, with the goal of purchasing something my wife would be comfortable driving. While we liked the Magnitude/Omni and the Isata models, we decided to look to the Freightliner-based vehicles due to the volume of negative reviews around the Magnitudes (though beautiful inside) and the comparatively modest storage and carrying capacities in the Isata models. Despite that, if it were just my wife and I, we probably would have gone with the Isata 28SS or 30FW. But it’s more than just the two of us, as mentioned below. What we liked about the Europa was the compact size (33 feet), a floorplan with two seating areas, a cabover bunk, and excellent tank, storage, and carrying capacities. We did look at the Seneca/Entegra but felt the fit and finish were maybe a little better with the Europa, and there wasn’t a comparably short version of the Jayco. As I recall, the floor of the Seneca cab was also not even with the rest of the coach - there was a stepdown, which prevented the chairs from swiveling, slightly shrinking the effective floorspace.
The Europa we purchased is optioned with two recliners in place of a couch, a propane/electric refrigerator, and tire pressure monitors. My wife and I travel with two pre-teens and two full-sized dogs (a mastiff and a lab). We’ve taken two trips since purchasing: one from southern California to the Sierra Nevada mountains (central California) and one from southern California to Butte Montana. Below I’ll try and summarize our thoughts and experience to date.
• Purchase, walkthrough, training: When we were looking for a Europa, most dealers didn’t have them, or what they had was already sold. We found one in the Los Angeles area that was available due to a cancelled sale, where the prior buyer felt it was just too big. No idea if that was true but after searching throughout the west coast and southwest, it was the only one that seemed available before the end of summer. During our walkthrough and test drive most things looked good aside from: the alignment was off, causing a pull to the right; there was a screw missing from an external storage bin; a tv tray had been installed backwards; the door to one of the outside storage compartments was scratched; some of the faux tile in the shower was coming unglued; some of the window shades wouldn’t return properly; and one of the dinette bench seats seemed to sink too much, accompanied by a *twang* sound, with heavier occupants sitting down. All except the alignment and seat had been addressed when we picked up the coach (see alignment comments later).
When we picked it up we were given a ‘training’ session by a guy who wasn’t our salesman. We don’t know much about RVs and figured much of the training would come through use and experience, so didn’t have high hopes on training. Unfortunately we were right. The guy training us kept reminding us that he had another session scheduled later that morning, with the inference that we had to move quickly. I didn’t care and kept asking questions but suffice to say the training was about a 3/10. Again, we didn’t expect much and figured we’d learn through use, so it wasn’t a huge deal - we were just excited with the purchase. Overall, the Europa was pretty much ready to roll at pickup, with alignment and dinette seat being the only outstanding issues.
• Build, fit and finish: This is an area that most new RV owners are probably surprised with, I know we were. RVs don’t stay together like houses. Not even poorly-built houses. It reflects the fact that these are big, heavy, complicated vehicles, being driven on freeways, surface streets, dirt roads, etc. As a result of the movement and stresses, there are lots of issues likely to surface within the first few months of ownership with just about any of them. We kept a notepad in our Tiffin 32SA solely dedicated to needed repairs. It was never blank. When we sold the coach after ~16 months of ownership, the fridge didn’t work (despite being repaired once), the generator turned off randomly (with or without an incomprehensible error message), the windshield leaked, and several external storage bins were cracked. Driving that vehicle was a loud experience, partly due to the fact that the V10 Triton engine seemed to strain at anything other than flat road, and partly due to a lot of background rattling and squeaking. This isn’t a slight against Tiffin - we really enjoyed the RV. It’s more of a heads up to anyone newer to RVs, like us. Sitting in a pristine vehicle on the sales lot is a very different experience than rumbling down the road at 60 mph.
Back to the quality of the Europa. We only have the 32SA to compare with, and that’s at a different price point. So not a fair comparison but the only one we have. The Europa is superior in every way as far as build quality. Doors, drawers, cabinets, etc. feel more solid, function better, rattle and squeak less. The soft-close feature of the drawers/cabinets is nice and they all seem to work as intended. Nothing has fallen off, broken, come off the tracks, etc (yet). Driving is still loud but it’s more pleasant without 100 decibels of background clatter and squeaks. By comparison, we had 3 pages of (mostly minor) issues after our first week in the Tiffin (drawers off tracks, dinette table misaligned, cabinet door misaligned, broken couch arm, broken closet hinge, etc….). The list is shorter with the Europa compared to a roughly similar timeframe with the 32SA.
• Driving position, visibility, comfort: This is a big vehicle and you sit high. It’s great, you’re pretty much equal to big rigs and actually higher than some. Overall visibility from the front seats is excellent. There’s a four-panel screen bolted onto the dash that displays camera views of each side of the coach, as well as two views out the back. This is extremely useful in the daytime when changing lanes and passing. It’s less useful at night as headlights from other vehicles produce significant distortion/glare. I ended up turning the brightness way down and ultimately relied solely on the side mirrors (and copilot) for night driving and lane changes.
The front seats are sort of comfortable, not luxurious or modern, but not uncomfortable. These are trucker seats, with air-controllers and their own suspension, something that was totally new to us. You can adjust the seat height by pressing a button on the side of the seat that airs it up. There’s also a shock absorber dampener in the seat that controls the compression/rebound of the seat as well. When aired up, putting the damper on the lowest setting gives a pogo-like sensation when hitting bumps; higher dampening slows this down. Finding the right adjustment for height and compression/rebound takes a little time but once you’ve found it, the seats are not bad at all. Mind you, these aren’t Lexus seats (see cockpit comments) but they’re ok. This is an area we may invest in over time but for now they work for us.
• Cockpit: For anyone new to RVing, the Freightliner cockpit/driver’s compartment is ridiculously dated. Think late-80s. Cheap looking plastic, lower quality seats, stereo from maybe the 90s, two cupholders in the entire cockpit, no console, etc. It’s interesting, the (terrible) Kenwood stereo in this coach is almost identical to the (terrible) Kenwood in our prior Tiffin. There must be a warehouse full of these somewhere, which would make sense as they certainly wouldn’t be sold out. On the dash, the digital display for the odometer and speed looks sort of like the first LED watches from the 1970s. That’s seriously what it reminds me of. I appreciate that these are complex vehicles and there may be better places to allocate expenses when building, but it’s nonetheless surprising at this price.
The level of cockpit amenities represents a huge difference when comparing the Freightliner and F-53 Class A coaches to the F550 and Ram 5500-based Class C vehicles. The F550/Ram vehicles have seats, dashboards, controls, etc. that actually appear to have been manufactured post year-2000. Since this is the area that an owner will spend a lot of time in, it might be worth it for a manufacturer to allocate a bit more to the look and feel of the driving compartment. I’d pay $5K more for an even semi-modern cockpit (no idea if that’s a reasonable amount). In fairness, the Europa/Dynamax part of the coach is not dated, it seems to be more the Freightliner part – but it would also seem to be easy for either mfg to address. They should.
• Driving experience, non-towing: The Europa has a much more planted, stable feel than the 32SA. Wind effects are significantly reduced and there’s not as much front-end push when passing semis. Just a much more solid driving feel overall. It’s very easy to drive with one hand. Cruising at 70 mph is not terrifying. I couldn’t really drive the 32SA at 70 without gripping the wheel tightly, as it just never felt comfortable, even with all the add-ons installed. Steering is fairly tight in the Europa, and responsiveness feels more like a super-sized SUV and less like an old school bus. After 12 hours you’re still tired but not feeling anything like the exhaustion or fatigue that results from constant steering corrections or unexpected swerves from wind gusts.
Another nice feature of the Europa is that since the driver’s seat is positioned in approximately the same place as in the road lane as an SUV there’s less adjusting to staying properly between the lines. This is something that can be challenging for new drivers of class A coaches, as those coaches place the driver further toward oncoming traffic, and if one adjusts to be in more of a car-like position in the lane, the passenger side wheels will be on the shoulder or in the next lane. It’s a weirdly minor thing but the Freightliner makes drivability more approachable for newcomers.
Driving the Europa on surface streets is surprisingly easy. It feels more like a delivery truck and less like a long motorhome. To be clear, you’re still driving a 33’ vehicle. But I don’t find myself hopping curbs or making drastic adjustments when turning. It’s just really easy to drive around town and it certainly drives smaller than it is.
• Driving experience, towing: We tow a Ram 1500 4x4 with around 1000 lbs of payload (two motorcycles, camping supplies, etc). While the Europa tows fine, there is a slight, yet noticeable lightness/sway to the front-end. This is more pronounced in windy conditions (I-15 through Utah). It still drives fine but this is noticeable. Maybe it could be addressed with a different rear track bar, I don’t know. Without wind I found that I could tow at 65 mph and it felt fine.
When it comes to braking, the Europa has airbrakes that are very strong on their own. Braking while towing is very good as we installed an Airforce 1 system that works as advertised – proportional to RV braking force and really helpful under heavy braking. I don’t know how it would brake without assistance from the towed vehicle but the standard brakes are certainly strong.
Towing on surface streets is fairly straightforward but the combined length of our Ram 1500 and the Europa must be pushing 55’, so it requires more planning when approaching corners, changing lanes etc. Once you get used to it though, it’s not bad. Something that surprised me is how well the Ram swings around corners without curb hopping. It’s a combination of being narrower than the RV, and the hitch (Blue Ox Avail) directing the truck such that it doesn’t cut corners the way I had feared. I don’t find myself making overly large adjustments to turns when towing on surface streets, which is surprising. Again though, you need to remember that you’re driving a long vehicle, one that shouldn’t be backed up when towing, so you’ve got to pay more attention in parking lots, neighborhoods, and places where turns and turnarounds might be problematic.
• Driving speed: When we aren’t towing, we can easily maintain 65 mph to 75 mph with very little effort. The vehicle tracks straight and the driver is pretty insulated from road imperfections. Bridge crossings do not lead to significant bouncing and we haven't experienced any porpoising, even at speed. On uphills it’s difficult to maintain constant speed and we typically see a slowdown of 10 mph or more when not towing. When towing up longer hills it’s not uncommon to slow to 40 – 45 mph with gas pedal floored.
• Misc driving notes: When driving uphill, a loud blower noise will turn on and off at random times. I don’t know what it is but assume it’s something in the engine being cooled. It will stay on for anywhere from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes, then turn off. You get used to it but it can be startling, and it definitely impacts the volume required to carry on a conversation. The headlights in the Europa appear to be pointed very far down the road, like beyond where brights are normally angled. Turning on high beams produces minimal difference in beam angle or brightness. Oncoming traffic never gave us their brights, so maybe this is ok, I don’t have any perspective on it. It just seems like the beams are aimed too high.
• Mileage: We’ve only checked mileage twice, and both times towing the Ram. We saw 6.3 mpg driving from Butte to Salt Lake City at 65 to 70 mph. Fairly mountainous in stretches. The second time we saw 8.4 mpg over a less mountainous stretch (Cedar City to Vegas) maintaining approximately 60 to 65 mph. Not towing would surely result in better numbers.
• Fuel tanks, fuel gauge: The Europa comes with dual 50 gallon fuel tanks, one on each side of the cab. What’s neat about the setup is that when you’re on the road, they’re ideally positioned for truckstops. Something I never knew – truckstop gas pumps, where the big rigs fill up, are two sided. You basically pull into a lane, and there’s a pump on each side of your vehicle. You pay at one pump and both sides get turned on. So you can simultaneously fill both 50 gallon tanks without having to turn around and reposition to fill the other tank. It’s a great feature and gets you in and out of a gas station a lot faster.
The tanks themselves are connected in a manner that allows fuel to equilibrate between them, though this happens far too slowly to allow you to fill both tanks from one side. Because they’re connected, in theory you don’t need to worry about one going empty while the other is full. I say in theory because it appears as though both the fuel gauge and fuel flow into the engine are tied to the driver’s side tank. In our experience, this has led to the gas gauge showing artificially low fuel levels, when we actually had plenty of fuel. Twice the gauge has gone into the red zone (<1/8th full), and the fuel light has illuminated. However, the most we’ve ever added is 59 gallons, indicating that we’ve had 40+ gallons of fuel despite the gauge approaching E. I haven’t had the balls to test whether the tank is being emptied faster than the equilibration process, which could result in the sensation of running out of gas while one tank is pretty full, but based on the uneven tank levels when re-filling, it’s something I do wonder about. In reading that after writing it, I can’t imagine the engine would ever ‘run out’ with one tank full. That said, the gauge misread is pretty distracting on long stretches.
• Jacks/Autoleveling: In our experience the autoleveling feature doesn’t work well. Even on essentially flat surfaces it seems to work too hard, ultimately lifting the vehicle higher than necessary. Once the autolevel button is pressed, it tends to cycle through extensions at each jack and at the end of the process at least two wheels are off the ground. At this point the coach may or may not actually be level. We’ve taken to manually adjusting the jacks and found this to be more effective though I wonder if it’s harder on the jacks.
• Storage: The Europa has very good storage capacity and outstanding cargo carrying capacity. It’s also thoughtfully designed in that all of the external storage bays are on the passenger side, while the utility bays are all on the driver’s side. Since the slides extend on the driver’s side, this design is great because it’s easy to get gear and you never have to worry about bumping your head on the slide. As far as carrying capacity, this is where the Freightliner chassis shines. The Europa’s CCC is 11,900 lbs, simply outstanding and a number we’ll never approach. By comparison, the pickup based super-C CCCs tend to be more in the 1500 – 2200 lb range, though the F600 option pushes this higher.
• Problems/Issues:
o Slide topper: Slide toppers are the fabric covers outside the coach that unwind to cover the tops of the slides when they’re extended. In the Europa, the dinette slide topper has come loose 4 times in a month and is now torn from flapping in the wind, even though we’ve stopped immediately each time it has happened. The temporary fix has been to extend and retract the slide, which effectively tightens any slack. The problem is that when the topper is loose, it doesn’t unwind or rewind properly, leading to bunching. This has prevented the slide from fully extending a couple of times. I’ve fixed it by standing on the bed of my truck and manually assisting the topper to unwind during extension. We’ll get this fixed. As a side note, the Tiffin’s dinette slide topper was also problematic and needed to be repaired before delivery and later replaced completely. It’s surprising that a relatively low-tech feature would be this unreliable.
o Tank sensors: Our Europa’s grey water sensor doesn’t work. It always says empty. The fresh tank sensor works most of the time but has shown zero a couple of times when it was more than half full. This seems to correct once we’ve started driving again but I’m not exactly sure what fixes it. The black tank sensor seems to work.
o Battery life: In a word, abysmal. The batteries will not support the fridge overnight. I don’t know if they’re supposed to - they don’t. By morning there’s always a beeping sound coming from the inverter compartment and the fridge has converted to propane power. We’ve fixed this by simply turning off the fridge at night. Maybe that’s what we’re supposed to do, but it was a surprise that the standard battery setup in a $300K+ coach won’t support a relatively small refrigerator for one night.
o Solar: The Europa comes with two solar panels. The only evidence I have that they’re doing something comes from a panel below the main control touchscreen that shows charging is occurring. Functionally, if the kids are watching tv or playing on an X-Box, the batteries don’t keep up and the beeping sound mentioned above is commenced, with fridge again converting to gas. Even on bright, sunny days. So if the solar is helping with charge it’s a pretty minor trickle.
o Alignment: When we test-drove the Europa, it had a noticeable pull to the right. We requested an alignment, which the dealer said was performed (delaying pickup by a week). It still pulled to the right at pickup. Rather than wait for another round of alignment from the dealer, we took it to a San Diego Freightliner dealer. After their inspection we were told the alignment was off, the rear axle had been inappropriately adjusted to counter the right-pull, front wheel caster was off, the driver’s side airbag (rear suspension) was not properly adjusted to account for the weight of the slides, and there was evidence suggesting the steering wheel had been adjusted to mask misalignment. I’m not qualified to assess the accuracy of the comments but it seemed like a lot of stuff ($800 dollars worth). At any rate, the right-pull was corrected with this service.
o Control panel: This is the ipad-like thing bolted to the interior wall that serves as a master control for climate, slides, generator, etc. It’s super useful and pretty intuitive. The one issue we have is that there’s a constantly blinking exclamation point inside a triangle displayed along the top of the screen. It began at the dealership and the service techs didn’t know what it was. They turned the coach battery on and off and ‘fixed’ it – i.e. the blinking symbol disappeared. Unfortunately it returned on the way home and has been with us ever since. Everything seems to work but it’s strange to have the thing blinking all the time.
o Misc: A couple of items that need addressing after two trips include a small gap around the shower door track that allows water to leak onto the bathroom floor, and the external compartment doors need to be closed slowly as slamming doesn’t always allow them to latch.
• Other:
o Bed: The king bed mattress in the rear of the coach is very firm. We still sleep fine but it’s notably firmer than our home (firm) mattress. The mattress folds at around the 1/3 mark, to allow the slide to come in. The lower third is connected to the rest of the mattress by fabric that I suspect won’t last very long. It would be better to avoid this design but I don’t know how that could be done without a compromise somewhere else. If the coach were 18” longer it might allow the bathroom to be repositioned to allow the slide to come in without folding the bed. Maybe that’s not practical though, and another 18” in length is another 18” in length, negatively impacting one of the great selling points of the coach.
o Bathroom: The bathroom is long and narrow, larger overall than most. Shower size is good and you don’t bump your arms on the walls while showering. Since the master bed slide renders the bedroom inaccessible when it’s in, it would nice if the bathroom wall were shifted 2-3 inches into the bedroom. It seems that this would minimally impact bedroom size but meaningfully impact bathroom width, creating better proportion and more room when sitting on the toilet, which is slightly tight.
o Soundbar: The coach comes with two soundbars – one with the outdoor tv, one with the indoor tv. They work great. The nice thing about them is that they allow pairing with a phone to play music, creating a better option than navigating the user-unfriendly Kenwood in the dash. Sound quality is also better through the soundbars.
o Wind noise: In researching other coaches, I’ve sometimes seen comments about wind noise from the cabover bunk. There isn’t much wind noise with this coach, and nothing too noticeable from the cabover. It’s fairly quiet with respect to wind noise.
Overall, we’re really happy with this coach. The interior has a sort of beachy feel that’s more modern than a lot of other options in this price range, and it really feels as though it was carefully thought through. RV layout must be a real challenge given the size constraints and the Europa has been well-designed. We’ve received a lot of compliments while traveling, and everyone loves the look of the Freightliner front end.
That’s our review. Long post but hopefully helpful for someone looking for one of these. I’ll try and update as we get more experience.
Brian
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