2026 Grand DesignImagine 2500RL

The Imagine 2500RL moves up from the XLS line into the flagship Imagine range, and the rear-living layout is where the step up shows. A windowed rear lounge with the dinette and seating opens up the back of the trailer, the bedroom sits forward, and the whole package carries the residential finish — the cabinetry, the appliances, the interior design — that earned Grand Design its industry-leading owner-satisfaction scores.

It's built on the same laminated aluminum-framed cage and gel-coated fiberglass exterior as the XLS, with foam insulation, a one-piece roof membrane and a heated, enclosed underbelly — but the flagship line adds MorRyde CRE-3000 rubber suspension for a smoother tow and insulated slam-latch baggage doors. Tanks grow too: a 45-gallon fresh tank and a large 82-gallon grey tank support extended stays for two.

At 6,569 pounds dry with a 7,850-pound GVWR it offers 1,281 pounds of payload — the lightest payload of the flagship plans profiled here, a reminder to load carefully — and sits in half-ton-plus territory. For couples who have decided the XLS isn't quite enough trailer and want the full flagship Imagine experience in a rear-living plan, the 2500RL is the natural place to start in the upper line.

Grand Design's Imagine family — the premium-mainstream volume leader and the industry's perennial owner-satisfaction front-runner. It spans three sub-lines: the lightweight Imagine AIM, the medium-duty Imagine XLS (standard rooftop solar), and the residential flagship Imagine. The 2500RL on this page is highlighted; each other profiled plan links to its own page. The full family runs more than thirty floorplans; the highest-demand layouts across XLS and the flagship line are detailed here and the rest are catalogued on the line hub.

This floorplan carries its water comfortably. A full 45-gallon fresh tank is roughly 29% of the 1,281-pound cargo capacity, leaving the Imagine 2500RL with a usable gear budget even when you tow full.

The published dry tongue weight of 742 pounds is 11% of the 6,569-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 7,850-pound GVWR the Imagine 2500RL is towing 1,281 pounds more than its 6,569-pound dry figure, and that is the number your vehicle has to be rated for — not the brochure weight.

Tank balance is generous here: 45 gallons of fresh against 82 grey and 45 black, so waste capacity keeps pace with supply and the fresh tank is the constraint that ends a dry stay.

Ranked by GVWR, the Imagine 2500RL sits 3 of 8 in the Imagine line: 7,850 pounds against a line that runs from 6,395 to 10,195 pounds. That position is the useful thing to know, because the plans immediately either side of it are the real alternatives.

Either side of it in the same line: Imagine XLS 22RBE is 855 pounds lighter at 6,995 lb GVWR; and Imagine XLS 25DBE is 145 pounds heavier at 7,995 lb GVWR.

Against the Imagine 2500RL: the Coachmen Apex Ultra-Lite 246BARV is 2 ft longer; the Jay Flight 265RLSW is 1 ft longer; the Forest River No Boundaries NB20.9 is 3 lb heavier and 3 ft longer and sleeps 2 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 Imagine floorplans profiled here run 4,921 to 8,725 pounds dry and 22 to 37 feet of exterior length across 8 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 Imagine line hub.

This catalog tracks 18 specification fields per floorplan. Named sources publish 16 of them for the Imagine 2500RL. 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: slide count, 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 (97%) 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.

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