One of the most important inventions in RV history is the slide-out, which has been around in some form or another for over a century. Slides are a proven way to expand an RV’s interior space without making the unit any bigger while it’s on the road. Have you ever wondered what the concept of the slide would look like when taken to the extreme? This is the Beauer X8, and it’s a 21-foot-long camper that triples in width at the press of a button. Despite appearances, this thing will be available in America, too.
The RV world is full of trends, no different than the automotive industry and motorcycling. I’ve been writing about these RV things for about six years now and have noticed some fascinating emerging trends over that time. An increasing number of Americans don’t want to haul around immense travel trailers or fifth wheels. Larger RVs generally cost more to store, to maintain, and to operate. Then there’s towing or driving that leviathan around. That’s not to say that titanic fifth wheels and motorhomes are in danger of going extinct. Instead, it just means that part of the RV market is adjusting to satisfy this new demand.
One of the exciting developments from this trend is the proliferation of more compact European designs on the American RV market. Some importers are just dragging in actual European RVs, while some American RV manufacturers are coming out with European-inspired designs. One of the companies that sells to Americans but doesn’t actually advertise it is France’s Beauer. This company’s whole schtick is taking small campers and making them two or three times their size through a clever slide system that forms the trailer equivalent of a Chinese nesting box.
Beauer has launched its latest travel trailer, and this one is silly, even by American standards. The Beauer X8 allegedly sleeps eight people by roughly tripling in size when it’s parked.
Weirdness From France
I wrote about Beauer last year when its most popular product, the compact 3X, went viral. The Beauer 3X, which expands out to almost three times its size to sleep four people, wasn’t at all a new camper, as it had already been around for about a decade. But the 3X is one of those RVs that’s just perfect fodder for social media algorithms. It looks like some product from the future or like something that AI would make. If clickbait were a travel trailer, it would look like a Beauer 3X.
Yet, unlike everything that’s so fake on the Internet, the Beauer 3X is real. The people at Beauer have even told me that some of them are in America. The first Beauer was shipped here in 2022, and American customer shipments began in earnest in 2024. As of publication, Beauer still sells RVs to Americans.
As for Beauer, it’s been around since 2010 after designer Eric Beau and his dad wanted to build a camper that looked like it came from the 1960s. But more than that, Beau wanted a camper that was big on the inside and small on the outside. To facilitate that, he invented a trailer with modules that nested into each other, creating the first 3X, which was built in Beau’s garden.
Beau’s friends and family asked where they could get their own 3X, and that inspired him to turn the concept of the 3X into a whole business. Production began in 2012 with the 3X. In 2020, Beauer expanded the line by making a larger version of the 3X called the 3X Plus. Then, Beauer’s designers mounted a 3X on a truck, creating a funny motorhome called the 3XC. Beauer later went smaller, creating the 2X trailer.
Today, Beauer has changed its lineup again. The 2X is no longer being marketed, and the 3X has been renamed to the 4X. The company’s new naming scheme indicates how many people can sleep in the camper rather than the camper’s multiplication factor of expansion. The line now includes the prototype 6X, which more or less doubles in size to sleep six, and today’s subject, the triple-expanding action 8X. This trailer appears to be based on the 3X Plus that Beauer announced in 2020, but with a whole new interior and an updated exterior.
Three Times The Camper
The Beauer 8X starts life as an AL-KO dual-axle aluminum chassis featuring six AL-KO stabilizer jacks and AL-KO shocks. The body on top is a composite, and each section is one piece surrounded by a giant rubber seal. The trailer measures 21.8 feet long, 6.7 feet wide, and 9.5 feet tall in travel mode. At the push of a button, electric cylinders extend two rooms from within the trailer. This process takes about 60 seconds and, in an unfurled state, the trailer becomes 15.7 feet wide. Beauer says that, in their extended state, the additional two modules triple the interior space to 323 square feet.
There is some redundancy baked into the telescopic system. Beauer says that, if the electric cylinders fail, only three bolts hold each cylinder on, and they’re accessible from under the trailer. From there, you can manually open and close the modules until you replace the cylinders.
Something that I have always found neat about Beauer’s campers is how the interior is built. The surfaces and furniture pieces in the trailer are designed to either slot into the pieces in the extension modules or simply move out of the way during the room deployment or retraction. Here’s a video of the 3X expanding, and you can see the interior pieces slide out as the trailer opens up:
Thanks to this clever system, the Beauer is able to sport two separate bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The trailer’s main layout consists of the two bedrooms in the right-side (from the rear) module, the kitchen and bathroom in the central module, and the living room in the left module.
Starting with both bedrooms, each room features its own door, its own storage, and its own 63-inch by 78.7-inch bed. The portals from the bedroom lead into a shared closet in the middle. Beauer says that these two bedrooms are large enough to sleep two people each.
In the center module, you get a kitchen with a sink, a three-burner stove, a 190-liter refrigerator and freezer combo, plus cabinetry. Beauer says that these surfaces feature gray and white finishes, plus a splash of light wood on upper cabinets and partitions. The flooring adds another wood touch.
On the other side of the center module is a bathroom featuring a 27.5-inch by 27.5-inch shower, a Thetford cassette toilet, and an optional washing machine. The central module also features an outdoor shower. The water facilities pull from a 14.5-gallon tank and a 6.61-gallon water heater, then drain into a 14.5-gallon gray tank.
Finally, we arrive at the living room, which features a handful of windows, two L-shaped couches, and a coat rack. Both couches, which feature faux leather cushions, convert into a pair of 55.1-inch by 78.7-inch beds for four more sleepers. Eight people in a camper that’s only 21.8 feet long is impressive.
All of this is powered by a 150 Ah lithium battery. Household outlets and USB ports are found throughout the trailer. Beauer says that, for the trailers that get shipped to America, they receive a 115V electrical system, U.S.-style plugs, and a chassis from the U.S. arm of AL-KO.
The list of options is vast. From Beauer:
– 2 × Dometic chassis-integrated reversible air conditioning (heating/cooling).
– 2 × Mover with dual motors, remote-controlled.
– 4 flexible 100W solar panels.
– 13-inch black or gray aluminum wheels.
– Thule Awning, 4.50 m.
– Outdoor Lighting.
– Foam-backed fabric kit for bedroom wall paneling.
– 200 Ah lithium battery (upgrade from the standard 150 Ah battery).
– Reinforced insulation kit with inflatable gasket.
– Full exterior covering in a color of your choice.
– 1/2 Exterior cover in a color of your choice.
– White cabinetry (lower section) and wood (upper section + countertop).
– Safari Room for Thule Sunshade.
– Induction cooktops.
– Gas or electric oven.
– BOB Dishwasher.
– Microwave.
– Television.
– Engine compartment and boom painted black.
– Clesana C1 Eco-Friendly Toilet.
– Heating + 2,000 W Webasto gas or electric underfloor water heater.
– Truma Eezy 1,800 W Electric Heater.
– Fiamma Bike Rack.
– Washing machine built into a kitchen cabinet.
– AL-KO Trailer Hitch Lock.
SIGNATURE OPTION: Choice of colors for cushions and the end wall inside the living room.
The Price Makes An American Camper Seem Cheap
That’s right, the base model does not have heat or air conditioning. Thankfully, both are optional. You would think, then, that the Beauer 8X is affordable. Well, that fancy telescoping system is apparently very expensive. The base price of the 8X is 109,990€, or $127,480 at current exchange rates. This price does not include shipping the unit across the ocean or import duties. Beauer does not say what a loaded example costs.
That price comes with several limitations. Beauer says that if you run your option sheet through the garden, the trailer will weigh 5,732 pounds (empty weight is not quoted). The gross vehicle weight rating of the trailer is 5,952 pounds, so if you get the trailer loaded with nearly the whole options list, you have only 220 pounds left for cargo and gear.
The low cargo weight is really only the start of the drawbacks with this unit. One of the quirks of having an expanding design is that the inner walls of the rooms don’t go fully to the ceiling. That’s not that big of a deal for the bedrooms, but it does mean that the bathroom is technically open to the living room. Now, this isn’t unheard of; both of my family’s campers vent their bathrooms into the rest of the trailers, too. But it does mean that, like my family’s campers, you might not want to unload your Taco Bell into the toilet in a loud manner.
Another potential drawback with the camper’s design is that when the trailer’s compacted for travel mode, the bathroom is inaccessible. That’s not the worst thing, given the abundance of rest areas on American highways. But, if you’re on a long enough stretch and cannot find a bathroom, you have to deploy the trailer’s modules to get to the toilet.
The water tank is barely large enough for one person to use off-grid, let alone eight. So, this is strictly a camper that you’ll be taking to improved campsites. That is, so long as you can find a campsite that has enough horizontal space for 15.7 feet of camper. I have been to many campgrounds with huge sites, so I’m not too concerned about the size. Still, all of these are factors to consider.
Then there’s the U.S. support, or the lack of it. Beauer says that it’s selling units to Americans. The company does zero actual advertising to Americans. You won’t find a Beauer at an RV show. While there is a U.S. importer for Beauer trailers, there is no real service network. If you want one in America, you have to ring up the company’s office in France, order a U.S. model, and have it shipped. I have seen American owners of Beauers reaching out to the company’s social media pages asking for documentation and manuals for their trailers.
What this means to me is that you shouldn’t buy one of these expecting the same experience that you’d get by buying a camper from Winnebago, Forest River, Heartland, or Jayco. Instead, if something breaks, you might be on your own to fix it. Of course, all of what I just stated is a lot to ask for a trailer priced at $127,480.
But if you can put up with all of that, and it is a lot, and then are willing to drop six figures on a camper halfway across the world, you’ll get something that nobody else at the campsite has. I do not doubt that you’ll get non-stop questions wherever you go, and your party trick of expanding by three times will be the talk of the campground. This trailer is basically built for the extrovert.
Given the pricing and the lack of nationwide support, I suspect that I will probably never see one of these in America. Despite that, I adore the creativity at work here. Beauer took a common concept, the slide-out, and basically put it on steroids. Sure, it’s not that practical, can’t carry much weight, and costs more than a Lotus Emira, but it’s so silly I can’t help but give it a thumbs up.
Top graphic image: Beauer
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