2026 Apex Ultra-Lite 242BARV

The Apex Ultra-Lite 242BARV is the line’s social entertainer — a front-bedroom, rear-bath couples’ plan built around a single party trick. An innovative bi-fold side door opens upward and folds down into a bar-style serving counter, merging the indoor galley with an outdoor entertaining space, so you can host a tailgate or a campsite happy hour without ferrying food in and out. A front bedroom anchors one end, a full rear bath sits at the other, and a single slide opens the living area. Nominal capacity is four — this is a couples’ and small-family layout, not a bunkhouse.

At 5,772 pounds unloaded and 28 feet 10 inches, the 242BARV is a comfortable half-ton or capable-SUV tow with about 1,828 pounds of cargo capacity, a healthy payload for an ultra-light. Standard equipment is full 12-volt residential and noticeably richer than the value tier: a 10-cubic-foot 12V refrigerator, a 3-burner stovetop with an air-fryer oven, a 15,000-BTU ducted air conditioner, a 55-amp power center with standard 50-amp service, a 400-watt solar system with inverter prep and a 16-foot power awning. A 50-amp upgrade with a second 13,500-BTU air conditioner is optional for hot-climate buyers.

Construction is the Apex Aluma-Cage recipe — vacuum-bonded laminated dual Azdel fiberglass sidewalls and rear wall, a laminated aluminum trussed roof with a Dicor Crossflex membrane, a laminated aluminum-framed floor and a fiberglass front cap — a clear tier above the metal-sided Catalina value line. The composite Azdel walls resist water intrusion and add sound and thermal insulation. For a couple who entertains and wants a genuinely light, well-built trailer with an outdoor bar, the 242BARV is the signature Apex plan.

Coachmen's Apex Ultra-Lite is the brand's premium-mainstream ultra-light travel trailer — a laminated-fiberglass, aluminum-framed line built to tow behind a mid-size SUV or any half-ton. The 242BARV on this page is highlighted; the other profiled plans link to their own pages. Profiled here are breadth-spanning floorplans — couples rear-bath, bar-style entertainer, family bunkhouse and rear-living lounge — with the rest of the roster catalogued on the line hub and profiled in demand order. (Apex also fields a value-priced metal-framed Apex Ultra-Lite X sub-line and the smaller Apex Nano, summarized on the hub.)

This floorplan carries its water comfortably. A full 50-gallon fresh tank is roughly 23% of the 1,828-pound cargo capacity, leaving the 242BARV with a usable gear budget even when you tow full.

The published dry tongue weight of 740 pounds is 13% of the 5,772-pound dry weight, which sits inside the 10–15% band usually quoted for stable towing. It is still a dry figure: loading the front pass-through and the fresh tank both push it up.

Nothing above changes the ceiling. Loaded to its 7,600-pound GVWR the 242BARV is towing 1,828 pounds more than its 5,772-pound dry figure, and that is the number your vehicle has to be rated for — not the brochure weight.

Tank balance is generous here: 50 gallons of fresh against 35 grey and 35 black, so waste capacity keeps pace with supply and the fresh tank is the constraint that ends a dry stay.

Of the 5 Coachmen Apex Ultra-Lite floorplans profiled here, the 242BARV is the lightest by GVWR at 7,600 pounds — the entry point to the line and the one most likely to suit a vehicle already at its limit.

Either side of it in the same line: Coachmen Apex Ultra-Lite 244RBS is 54 pounds heavier at 7,654 lb GVWR.

Against the 242BARV: the Campsite Ultra 19KB is 6 ft shorter; the Flying Cloud 27FB sleeps 1 more. Those are differences in the published numbers only — what they cost, how they are built and how they live are separate questions each of those pages answers on its own terms.

Those are the nearest travel trailers from other lines by weight — one per line, picked by proximity on that figure and nothing else. They are listed so the same tow vehicle can be checked against real alternatives, not because they are equivalent inside; layout, build and price diverge sharply across that group.

For scale, the Coachmen Apex Ultra-Lite floorplans profiled here run 5,772 to 7,304 pounds dry and 29 to 34 feet of exterior length across 5 plans. Where a floorplan falls in that spread usually says more about which vehicle can tow it, and which site it fits, than the layout name does.

Every profiled floorplan in this line, with the full weight table, is on the Coachmen Apex Ultra-Lite line hub.

This catalog tracks 18 specification fields per floorplan. Named sources publish 16 of them for the 242BARV. The rest are not shown, because the alternative is reading a figure across from a sibling floorplan or from what the segment usually does — and a number nobody published is worth less than an admitted gap.

Not published for this floorplan: interior height, tire specification. If you find one of these in a manufacturer document for this plan, it belongs on this page.

The completeness figure at the foot of this page (94%) measures the same thing on the full field set: it is a measurement of how much this floorplan’s manufacturer publishes, not of how much research went into the page.

Values on this page carrying an asterisk were derived by arithmetic from published figures, or come from a single source, rather than being printed directly by the manufacturer. The flag travels with the number into the downloadable spec sheet.

How every figure here was sourced and checked is set out on the methodology page.