Custom Fifth-Wheel Orion Is What Downsizing in Luxury Is All About

As downsizing, tiny living and the nomadic lifestyle continue to trend well into 2023, it’s clear that people’s appetite for a more mobile and unconventional lifestyle has only whetted. Alternative living can have different manifestations, including a very luxurious one, as is the case with David and Sondra’s impressive rig.

So, what do you do when you still want to downsize and live on the road, but are not willing to go all the way in terms of ditching the comforts of a home? You go full-custom, of course. And you also ditch the preferred vanlife or a tiny house for a custom fifth-wheel built specifically for you on a semi-trailer chassis, so you can make your home a legit palace on wheels.

David and Sondra have been living on the road since 2016, and in their custom RV since 2019, documenting their cross-country adventures on social media. The custom RV, which they call Orion, is actually an upgrade over their previous, smaller, factory-spec rig, so they wanted to make sure to integrate into it every little thing that they missed in the other. And boy, did it come out looking incredible!

We’ve covered luxury RVs here before, from massive trailers that slide out and pop up into giant penthouses, to fifth-wheels and landyachts designed for very specific purposes. Orion takes up a special place in this unofficial hall of fame, in that it remains homey despite being outrageous. Because of David and Sondra, it is also quite inspirational. Probably very expensive, but inspirational.

Orion is the custom trailer, which the two got from SpaceCraft, a Missouri-based company that does luxury, custom RVs and specialized vehicles. It’s 46 feet (14 meters) long and 13.5 feet (4.2 feet) tall, and it took 8 months to build. The design is exclusively David and Sondra’s, because they wanted their rig to integrate certain stuff that added a touch of “home,” like pieces of memorabilia picked out on their travels or features they felt they couldn’t do without.

Orion has three large slide-outs and is pulled by a 2016 Volvo VNL780 semi-tractor they named Voyager, with a 2016 Smart fortwo serving the same function as a tender does to a superyacht: supply runs and errands, exploring cities, and travel over shorter distances. The interior is vast, and even this term feels like an understatement, yet offers sleeping for just the two of them. In the video tour below, Sondra keeps describing it as “residential,” but this is way more spacious and luxurious than an average house.

Standout features include custom recliners in the living room and a “secret, Harry Potter room,” which is actually a drawer under the large-screen TV that holds the central channel speaker and inflatables for the guest “bedroom.” The kitchen would make a certified chef jealous, with full-size appliances, a quartz countertop island with double sink and dishwasher, two appliances garages, and more storage than the two actually use. It also offers a full-size double fridge and, in a separate cabinet, a dual soda dispenser with a carbonated water cooler they call The Beast for the way it drains their batteries.

Since David and Sondra are full-time RV-ers, they made sure Orion integrated everything they wanted, starting with the soda dispenser. Sondra got her own workstation slash desk, where she does journaling and sewing, while David was adamant he got a kickass surround system in the living.

The bedroom is off the entranceway, up a single step – so they jokingly refer to it as “the upstairs.” The main highlights here are a sliding door that doubles as art display and shoe closet door, and the amount of integrated storage. Like, a hoarder would probably think to themselves “hm, finally a place where I can keep all my stuff and not have it lying around.”

The bathroom is up next, and it too includes plenty of surprises that make life on the road easier. The shower cabin is an RV standard one, but it’s very tall, unlike what you’d find in a standard RV. A custom cabinet on the wall cleverly hides a fold-out ironing board and an expandable drying rack, along with cleaning supplies, a washing station, and necessary bathroom toiletries. The vanity with handmade, custom dual sinks is a beauty, and it also integrates lots of storage.

Orion has AC and heated floors, and is rigged for boondocking, including with 3,250 watts of solar on the roof, 30.1 KWH Lithium batteries, and inverters. Sondra says they like to go off the grid whenever they have the chance, so Orion was designed with that mind.

That’s actually the main difference between Orion and other similarly-sized luxury RVs: whereas those hardly ever go outside of RV parks and onto the road, David and Sondra takes theirs out constantly. Orion is not just luxurious and nice to look at, but it does what it was designed to do. As they put it, if a home has wheels, then it must travel. Orion has been doing a lot of that over the past four years, with no signs of stopping soon.