With the college football season in its climactic month, a metaphor from my favorite spectator sport may be in order. (My favorite fall participant sport is jumping up and down in front of the television screaming at my team, its coaches and the officials for screwing up; this is great exercise and good for the circulation, as one might see by the bulging veins in my forehead.)

Anyway, here’s the metaphor: How do you stop the devastating new spread offenses that are terrorizing college football? One way is to position defensive linemen and linebackers in the wide gaps between offensive linemen and try to shoot those gaps to get to the ball carrier or passer.

Motorhome manufacturers are onto this strategy, too. One way to attack a highly successful offense, like Holiday Rambler’s, is by positioning your product — with regard to price and features — in the gaps between your opponent’s models.

Of course, Holiday Rambler management is smart enough to realize that, unlike a football coach, they aren’t limited by the rules as to how many players they can put on the field. They can just fill all those gaps with great new players until the line spans the whole breadth of the field from entry level to ultra-luxury models, lined up shoulder-to-shoulder with nary a gap to shoot.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Holiday Rambler’s diesel line consisted of Endeavor, Imperial and Navigator. Now there are two lines less expensive than Endeavor — Ambassador and Neptune — and Scepter, introduced a few seasons ago to fill the gap between Endeavor and Imperial.

The benefit to motorhome enthusiasts is that they never have to worry about being lured away from all that is Holiday Rambler because somebody else came up with a way for them to save a few dollars (okay, a few thousand dollars; we are talking about luxury coaches here) or get a few more features. Holiday Rambler offers something for everybody. If you can’t find the perfect fit for your budget and desires in one of Holiday Rambler’s six diesel pusher lines, you’re too picky for me. And you’re missing out on everything that is special about owning this legendary brand.

Take the Holiday Rambler Ambassador for example. It brings a big load of luxury at an extremely popular price.

Of course, like college football rivalries, diesel coaches are partly about bragging rights. You don’t have to tell people how little your Ambassador cost. If people want to believe it was a lot more, let them. It certainly looks and performs like a lot more, especially for 2006.

So let’s take a look at this year’s improvements.

WHAT’S NEW FOR 2006?

Holiday Rambler executives are making a lot of noise about the new Panaview™ one-piece windshield, as well they should. Standard on Ambassador and every other Holiday Rambler class A motorhome, including gasoline models, the Panaview offers the best view possible from the cockpit — and watching the world glide by is perhaps the chief joy of motorhome travel. There is no center post to obstruct your view, the windshield wipers rest horizontally at the bottom of the huge expanse of glass, and the windshield wraps well around the corners of the cab.

The Panaview windshield not only makes driving the equivalent of a trip to the IMAX theater, it adds an extra margin of safety.

You have to experience driving a big coach with this kind of visibility, and you can do so without leaving your home, assuming you have an Internet connection. There is a cool video demonstration at www.see-panaview.com (you can just link to it at www.holidayrambler.com). It shows you the difference in visibility between driving with a center post and vertical wipers and driving with Panaview, in the city, the country, the mountains and more.

Along with the new windshield, Ambassador has an exciting new design for the full-body paint job.

There are several other new features on the 2006 Ambassador you should know about:

• Interior height increased to seven feet. You can’t have too much headroom. Ambassador now has as much as most houses.

• Redesigned side-hinge baggage doors. The recent advent of side-hinge doors has gotten hundreds of thousands of motorhomers off their knees. This year the latches are redesigned and repositioned for even greater convenience.

• Fully automatic leveling system. Another feature of ultra-luxury coaches now available for the guy who only wants to spend a couple hundred thousand. Park (on reasonably level ground), push a button, and go crack a beer while the coach levels itself.

• Peaked one-piece fiberglass roof. This new design makes for better water runoff and a stronger surface, resists leaks and just looks better.

• Bed slideout now 30 inches deep. More room to move around.

Finally, there’s a good deal of additional interior storage compared to the previous model, and each coach now comes prewired for a supplemental braking system.

Since motorhomers love nothing better than bells and whistles, here are the highlights on new options available on Ambassador.

The Aladdin Junior video monitoring system. Aladdin Junior monitors engine and road speed, engine and transmission temperatures and engine fluid pressure, reading out through the rear video monitor in the dash. (The full-blown Aladdin system introduced on more expensive coaches a couple of years ago also monitors coach systems such as fresh water and holding tanks and electrical systems, reading out through TV monitors.)

You’ll also find longer patio awnings mounted above the slideout; a 27-inch widescreen LCD TV in the cab overhead; a fully automatic digital satellite system — turn it on, it finds the satellite; and a king-size bed.

NEW INTERIORS — HELLO, LIZ CLAIBORNE

For 2006, Ambassador sports a choice of five interior/exterior color themes, including two upgraded Liz Claiborne designs (Canyon Mosaic and Blackwood Manor II). The others are Brushed Nickel, Mesa Pine and Spanish Moss. Again, the Holiday Rambler website has a beautiful interactive display of these interior materials and exterior graphics.

The standard cabinetry is a new Vintage Oak design, with options for Newport Cherry and Champagne Select.

MY SNEAK PREVIEW

The new 2006 Ambassadors were few and far between when I traveled to Indiana to research this story, but I was able to look at a beauty that was being photographed at the studio of my old friend, Larry McCay, whose work often appears in these pages.

The rig was a 40PLQ. This quad-slide floorplan is inventive and supremely practical in its unusual use of bedroom space. Beyond that, the unit I saw had some modifications to the standard floorplan you’ll see on the Holiday Rambler website.

The standard 40PLQ bedroom includes a swivel easy chair, a combination vanity/desk/computer station, a dresser on the rear wall, and a wall of closets, drawers and cabinets opposite the foot of the bed.

The unit I saw had the TV mounted flush in the middle of the cabinet wall. At the left of that wall was a closet that housed a washer-dryer. To make room for that structure, the vanity/desk had been moved to the curb-side wall and the easy chair dispensed with.

One way or the other it is an extremely utile space, and the massive amount of woodwork (this coach had the optional Newport Cherry cabinetry and trim) gave the room an exceptionally rich, warm ambience.

The new floorplan introduced this year is the 40PET. No, it wasn’t designed by Bob Guccione. The plan has a conventional bedroom with the large wardrobe on the rear wall and a two-sofa living room. The novel stuff is in between. The kitchen is L-shaped, with the sink along the back wall, not the side, a small counter extension left of the sink, and a large counter extension at the forward end. The design yields an area of counter space you rarely find in any Class A motorhome, and yet everything is close at hand, saving you steps.

The bath is unusually spacious, featuring two lavatories (one with huge counter space, the other in the private water closet) and an angled tub/shower.

The other floorplans are a 37-foot double slideout and 38- and 40-foot quad-slides.

BUILT FOR THE ROAD

The Ambassador is built on a Roadmaster RR8R chassis with eight gas shock absorbers and eight outboard airbags for a great, smooth ride and great stability. Handling is further enhanced by a computer system that instantaneously adjusts the air suspension side-to-side and front-to-rear to keep the coach flat and stable in turns and prevent porpoising on the highway.

An Allison 3000MH six-speed electric shift transmission gets the most out of the powerful Cummins ISC 330 engine. A 10,000-pound-capacity hitch receiver is standard.

The Roadmaster raised-rail chassis, custom-made to optimize weight distribution for each floorplan, is extremely rigid and maximizes basement storage capacity.

The coach body structure is Holiday Rambler’s legendary Alumaframe® design with interlocking C-channel framing. This system provides superior strength while saving a great deal of weight for things that matter — like all the gear you want to stow and tow.

Once again, you can study Ambassador’s great construction and performance features in detail at www.holidayrambler.com. It’s typical of Holiday Rambler that even their website is 100 percent deluxe. Great graphics, easy to navigate, fast, and, best of all, highly informative in its detail.

Go there today. If you don’t have a computer, buy one, just to see this website. If you don’t have a place for a computer, a 2006 Ambassador would be perfect for that, too.

See how Holiday Rambler fills all the gaps? When it comes to helping you enjoy your life on the road, they think of everything.