2023 Ford Everest build: MSA 4x4 storage and National Luna fridge

While we certainly enjoyed the massive space available to us in the back of the Ford Everest and made the most of it carrying around plenty of large items, the time had come to kit out the cargo space to better suit touring needs.

For us this always means carrying a car fridge of some sort, so a suitable mounting system was called for, along with a setup that would maximise the remaining available space.

Outfitting a wagon for such use isn’t as easy as fitting a slide within a service body or ute tub. You are limited not only by the smaller space but also the rear door opening that provides access to your fridge and gear. The shape and height of the Everest’s door stops you from fitting a fridge slide or a drop slide on top of a set of drawers, so we chose instead to fit an MSA straight slide on the nearside of the cargo area, and an MSA roller drawer on the other side.

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That said, the Everest’s rear door opening is squarer and larger than what we had to work with on our previous Isuzu MU-X build, in which we fitted a similar MSA combination.

An MSA fridge barrier encloses the fridge and slide and allows us to use the space on top of it, where you can easily strap down camp chairs or soft bags in the available gap. Using the barrier not only protects the fridge from damage but also maintains a decent air gap around the unit for optimum fridge performance.

The fridge slide and barrier perfectly accommodate our National Luna Legacy stainless steel 50-litre dual-zone fridge/freezer and provide easy access to it whenever we need it.

At the time of fitting, MSA 4x4 didn’t have an off-the-shelf kit for mounting its gear in the back of the current-model Everest so a custom frame and false floor had to be fabricated, securing the hardware using the mounts where the third-row seat would have been. The MSA guys used our Everest to set it up with a double or single drawer and the required wing panels, and then removed the near-side drawer to allow room for the fridge slide and barrier. Paul and the team at Statewide 4x4 finished off the installation for us.

MSA’s drawers are a work of art and you can really see that a lot of thought and design work has gone into them. Straight away you can see and feel the quality of the product, with its anodised and knurled handles and catches, the smooth rolling fully enclosed stainless-steel rollers, and the detent that holds the drawer open even if your vehicle is parked nose down.

The quality continues inside with the fully lined drawer and LED light that comes on when you pull the drawer out. And best of all, the drawer pulls out its full length so you can access stuff stored right at the back of it without having to blindly reach in.

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What you might not see in the drawers is the security built into them. MSA’s drawer systems, and the attachments that come with them (cargo barrier mount points and child restraint points), have been crash-tested and are fully ADR compliant; they are tested to ADR3/02, ADR34/01 and ADR42, and passed all the requirements prescribed by the ADRs and AS/NZS, without any structural weaknesses or degradation of the system. That’s something we are yet to see on other such storage systems and provides peace of mind for anyone driving a wagon loaded up with kit and passengers.

While we’ve sacrificed being able to carry bigger items inside the Everest, the MSA 4x4 fitout in the rear of the wagon certainly adds convenience for camping trips and carrying and accessing a fridge.

Anyway, we still have the Yakima rack on the roof for those bigger items that won’t fit in the back.