“This problem, when solved, will be simple.”

Charles Kettering, the famous inventor and long-time head of research at General Motors kept on his wall a plaque inscribed with those words. This is the guy who invented the electric starter for automobile engines. Kettering held more than 300 patents, including those for Freon and the first Delco engine-driven generator.

It’s too bad he isn’t still with us. Maybe Kettering could invent a way for GM to make its financial troubles go away.

But I invoke his favorite saying for a reason.

I thought of it the first time I stepped into the new Ambassador 40DFD diesel pusher motorhome. The DFD represents one of those breakthroughs where you just hit yourself in the forehead and say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

First, there was the slideout. Then the double slideout. Then the triple. Then the quad-slide. The first time I did an article in these pages on a quad-slide, I asked someone at Holiday Rambler, “What’s next, a telescoping rear end?” The answer was that they were thinking about it, on a fifth wheel, anyway. (Kind of hard to do on a rear-engine motorhome.)

So one day, someone is sitting around thinking, “Okay, we’ve got three slideouts on the roadside wall of this coach, and we can’t put any more on the other side without wiping out the patio area, so where do we go from here?” And the answer comes with that open-palmed smack in the forehead: “Make those three little ones into one big one, dummy.”

And, voila, there you have the new Ambassador 40DFD. One little slideout on the curbside, for the bed, one big one on the other side for the living room, galley and bedroom.

Using the proven scientific technique of pacing it off, I determined that this slideout — dubbed PANAsuite™ — is roughly 24 feet in length. It houses a large sofa, dining table, refrigerator (a four-four model with ice maker, standard equipment) and the beautiful storage/TV unit in the bedroom.

This new PANAsuite full-wall slideout completely changes the way the inside of the motorhome looks, feels and functions. We’re used to seeing wide-open forward quarters with a narrow passage to the rear at the back of the kitchen. No more. In the DFD, that passage requires a double-width pocket door. The sense of spaciousness is something you’ve never encountered in a motorhome before.

Room for New Ideas

The concept also changes some fundamental assumptions about motorhome layout. Principally, the bathroom is in the rear, rather than amidships. This isn’t unique to the DFD. The Ambassador 40DST is also a rear-bath model, and the floorplan exists as a triple- or quad-slide in several other Holiday Rambler lines. But the DFD’s PANAsuite full-wall slideout more or less dictates a rear bath, since people will want the extra space in the bedroom, not the bath.

Further, the idea works in this 40-foot coach, where it might be less practical in a significantly shorter model. There are problems with a floorplan that makes guests have to traipse through the master bedroom to get to the john. In practice, it would leave those guests stumbling through a dark campground on the way to the community facilities. However, the 40DFD has a feature dear to my heart — a half-bath just aft of the kitchen. This may be the ideal rig for my wife and me, given that she spends more time in the bathroom than Tiger Woods spends on golf courses and practice tees.

The rear bathroom itself is a luxury. It isn’t broken up by a hallway, as mid-baths are, and at the rear of the room is a wardrobe with sliding glass doors. The shower/tub is extra-large, and the sink counter has a flip-up extension. The area of the floor over the engine compartment is carpeted. It is in fact a large, luxurious bath-and-dressing-room. The closet that is prepped for a washer-dryer is also here, behind the toilet. Having this appliance in the bathroom rather than the bedroom makes sense to me.

Both the toilets in the 40DFD are Thetford Electric Silent Plus china models.

In the bedroom of my coach was a queen bed with built-in nightstands, the surface of which extended all the way to the wall next to the headboard. Aft of the bed (to your left when you are lying down) is an attractive storage system with upper and lower cabinets containing adjustable shelves and a little counter with a fluted mirror. The cabinets aren’t deep, but it’s a nice place for all kinds of smaller clothing items and personal effects.

Across from the foot of the bed, in the slideout, is one of the cool new full-wall dresser/storage units Holiday Rambler is building into many of its bedrooms. It contains six drawers, stepped in two tiers with usable surfaces on top, a window, two overhead cabinets and a large cabinet with adjustable shelves below the 20-inch television.

Brilliantly Appointed

I have written recently in these pages about another 2006 Ambassador, noting how this model line is positioned at a hugely popular price point, roughly $200,000 base suggested retail price, and covering the major new features that have boosted the value of the line considerably. So I will try not to go over too much of the same ground here, and instead point out some of the features that caught my attention in the 40DFD I saw.

The first thing to catch my attention when I entered the cab was the TV. The optional 32-inch widescreen high-definition LCD television that came in my coach is neither as tall nor as deep as a conventional TV, so you can leap, heedless, into the cockpit in complete cranial safety. Not to mention the joy of actually watching the thing.

Other cockpit amenities include standard six-way power seats on both sides (footrest for the co-pilot), power sun shades, halogen map/reading lights, and a home theater system with surround sound, DVD/VHS deck and, in the dash, a Sirius-ready radio. With CD player.

And of course there’s the new Aladdin Junior system that lets you monitor engine and road speed, engine and transmission temperatures and engine fluid pressure, reading out through the rear video monitor in the dash.

At the driver’s left hand are the controls for an automatic leveling system, new to Ambassador this year. Between this feature and only having to deal with two automatically locking slideouts, setting up this coach requires pushing three buttons and about two minutes before you step outside to hook up the utilities.

All Ambassador coaches are built with what the company calls a standard-run savings pack. That means you get cool stuff you’d order anyway, but at a savings. The pack includes a three-camera rear vision system with audio. The center camera is adjustable (you can pan it). The side cameras are mounted just behind the front bumper, so you can check for small vehicles in your blind spots before changing lanes. The pack also includes: two 13,500 BTU air conditioners with heat pumps; a Fantastic attic fan with rain sensor and thermostat in the bath; a pillow-top mattress; and a holding-tank monitor gauge in the exterior plumbing service bay.

Another advantage of the huge PANAsuite slideout is that there is more room devoted to overhead storage. This coach has six large and unusually deep overhead cabinets in the living area.

Also, as with many Holiday Rambler models this year, all the drawers are on extendable roller guides, so you can roll out the entire drawer, all the way to the back and beyond, so it is far easier to load drawers and to find things in them.

In the kitchen you will find a cool skylight that’s equipped with a day/night shade to help keep you cool at high noon.

There is plenty of mood lighting to accentuate the luxurious window treatments and the wealth of hardwood cabinetry and trim.

Outside, you have the convenience of a Carefree Eclipse power-operated patio awning, plus an armless power awning over the doorway and window awnings where needed.

Couple all the luxury with Ambassador’s running gear, and you have one of the best values in diesel coaches. The Roadmaster chassis features eight outboard air bags and eight shocks. The power is a Cummins ISC 330 with an Allison 3000 MH six-speed. You get full air brakes with antilock braking, exhaust braking and automatic traction control all standard.

A Simple Solution

There are many different diesel motorhomes out there. Two, three and four slideouts. Hundreds of floorplans. Thousands of features and options. Choices in chassis, engines and transmissions. Dozens of brands. Making a final choice can be a difficult and complex process.

However, if you are looking for a great value from the top manufacturer, built on a custom-engineered chassis, with the simplest way to make the best use of the most interior space… well, this problem is simply solved. Ambassador 40DFD featuring the all-new PANAsuite full-wall slideout. Charles Kettering would have loved it.