Auto-Trail Cheyenne 740S - Practical Motorhome

Find out what the experts think of the Auto-Trail Cheyenne 740S in the Practical Motorhome review

Verdict

A very impressive offering, but the cramped beds are a major letdown.

Pros

Spacious lounge; excellent build quality and classy fittings.

Cons

The single beds are too short for taller sleepers.

Living

The lounge is roomy: two side-facing benches and a big, freestanding, folding table (54 x 91cm) allow up to four to dine in perfect comfort. (The trade-off is that there are no front- or rear-facing belted travel seats.) At a stretch, six can be accommodated, thanks to the cab swivel seats and the additional circular table which fits into a bracket between the cab and living areas.

However, once swivelled, the Cheyenne’s cab seats provide  a scant amount of legroom so a clash of knees is almost certain to be a problem. The lounge table stows in a cabinet beside the habitation door, making it easy to retrieve for use outside, although we found that it easily gets caught on the cabinet latch during stowage and retrieval.

Kitchen

It’s a well-equipped kitchen but there’s no extractor fan, just a ventilator/skylight some distance away from the cooker. The Cheyenne has a three-burner hob plus an electric hotplate, and a 100-litre fridge/freezer.

The sink is a decent size, with two granite-effect covers which are homeless once removed. There is a substantial amount of workspace here.

Washroom

The rear-washroom layout means the Cheyenne is able to provide a spacious shower stall without the need to resort to any swing-wall shenanigans. It’s a natural, rectangular shape though the teardrop-shaped plastic basin is no fun to use.

There’s a generous wardrobe with hanging rail and shelves off to one side, plus ample storage space for toiletries thanks to an excellent set of wire racks in a cabinet beneath the sink.

Beds

The Cheyenne’s ‘bedroom’ reveals a design compromise:  if the rest of the ’van seems spacious, this is due partly to the beds being less than six feet long, which is not ideal for taller sleepers.

It has a TV mounting in the bed area, but as it’s fixed in position at the foot of one of the beds, one person will have a much better view of it than the other.

The single lounge bed is easy to make up: the lounge seats just slide out to meet in the middle. Also, the single beds in the rear have elevating head sections and these, too, are easy to operate: just pull a strap to raise the bed, then click it into place. The hinged bed base makes it simple to access the underbed storage spaces.

Storage

The Cheyenne has no garage but underbed storage space is capacious. Overhead lockers are generously allocated in the sleeping and living areas, but although they’re spacious and fitted with solid doors, they have bottom-edge lips under which small items could easily slip.