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 Topic: Choice of new caravans (or lack of)
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20/2/2024 at 6:25pm
Location: Midlands
Outfit: 2019 VW Arteon + 2002 Avondale Dart
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Last weekend, I went to the NEC show with the vague idea of finding a new replacement for my beloved and faithful, but tired 22-year-old Avondale. I came away feeling utterly deflated.
For starters, motorhomes / camper vans must have made up at least 80% of the stock.
Of the caravans that were there, the next issue is layout. I don't want a fixed bed. Rose and I (neither of whom, admittedly, are exactly small) need a king size bed to get comfortable, but are perfectly happy to make this up out of the seats in a large front lounge. We don't need, or want a large proportion of the space in the caravan to be permanently taken up by a bed that isn't big enough.
And we don't want a 2 berth either because we need a space for our dog to sleep. These two criteria alone rule out Swift and Adria's ENTIRE 2024 ranges!
Currently we have a 4 berth, side dinette, end washroom layout that suits us well enough (the side dinette area becomes 'Bonnie's bed'. But have a guess as to how many new caravans there are on sale with this layout. Nope, you're wrong. It's 3.
Of those 3, 2 (in the Bailey Unicorn range) weren't even on display. However, I did look at another Bailey Unicorn with a different layout and, blimey, it felt flimsy. If I can put my hand on the partition wall with the washroom and feel it physically shake, this doesn't inspire confidence in build quality.
So that leaves one caravan. A Coachman VIP-something. And apart from the very pale upholstery - guaranteed to show up every black dog hair and muddy pawprint ever produced - I liked it. I could see myself going on holiday in it. But at £35,000, I couldn't see myself buying it.
Had even one manufacturer produced the modern equivalent of what I have now - a relatively lightweight caravan, with a layout suited to small families and containing the luxuries I need but not those that I don't, costing around £22k in today's money - I might have been tempted to buy it. But they don't, so I wasn't.
For now, I'm faced with the choice of seeing whether my current van is fix-up and refurbishable at a reasonable cost, or buying another from around 2012-2015. If I decide to do the latter, I'd better hope it lasts. Because unless what's available on the market changes fairly soon, it might have to be the last one that I buy.
I accept that I may be in the minority with what I want from a new caravan. But surely I can't be the only person out there?
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20/2/2024 at 9:24pm
Location: London
Outfit: Lunar Cosmos 524
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Fat lot of good it will do you, you're not alone, I'm 100% with you.
My 2016 Lunar has your current layout, I spent a lot of time researching the market/options before I bought it, and gave a lot of thought to what would work best for me (and my dog), and that layout seemed best, and here we are 6 years on and I've had not a single regret, it's worked perfectly for me, I would CERTAINLY want a very similar layout if looking for a replacement van. I, like you, don't actually use the side dinette, I have the bunk beds set up, without the cushions, and the dog sleeps on the bottom, whilst the top is used for storage. Friends have a van with the same layout, and they use the side dinette in exactly the same way for their six dogs! It's a very flexible and useful layout!
Even back when I bought my van, I was less than impressed by the flimsy build of many brands, and a great many vans of under 2 years old that I was looking at, had significant damage/failures in/to interior cabinets, clearly not fit for purpose with anything but the most delicate and considerate owners! Despite my Lunar being a very lightweight van for it's size and equipment standards, it did feel a little more durable than many other brands, and so far it's survived intact! Just had it serviced and the service engineer commented on how good condition it was in, and absolutely nothing was broken or faulty, and how rare that was in his experience on even much newer vans!
Caravan manufacturers seem to be like sheep, where one goes, the others blindly follow! With the ever decreasing number of manufacturers (NOT brand names owned by a common manufacturer!), there seems little originality, if you hid the branding, you'd be hard-pressed to identify one manufacturer from another, such is the uniformity of design!
My upholstery is pale peppermint green, I use fleecy throws to keep it clean, and for the first time I've just had to shampoo a slight stain left by my long coated Border Collie on one bench seat. I've had friends visit and stay, who TBH are muckier than my dog and certainly left their mark on the throws! The throws of course get regular washes at least once a season! - but that's much easier and quicker than shampooing upholstery.
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20/2/2024 at 10:33pm
Location: East Herts
Outfit: 1992 Elddis Wisp 450CT + X Trail
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Quote: Originally posted by SamandRose on 20/2/2024
For now, I'm faced with the choice of seeing whether my current van is fix-up and refurbishable at a reasonable cost, or buying another from around 2012-2015. If I decide to do the latter, I'd better hope it lasts. Because unless what's available on the market changes fairly soon, it might have to be the last one that I buy.
I accept that I may be in the minority with what I want from a new caravan. But surely I can't be the only person out there?
My question would be "if you like what you have, why change it?" Unless of course it has some serious defects. Even then, you could do a lot of fixing up for a lot less than the cost of a new one. From what I have heard, mainly on here, many newer caravans don't seem to be as well built as some of the older ones.
Our caravan is now 32 years old, 10 years older than yours, and it works perfectly for us as yours appears to do for you. I have no plans to change it, and I don't think I would even if I could afford it. I would rather spend the money on more and better holidays. We bought our caravan for £1,100 nearly seven years ago. What can a brand new caravan do that ours can't? What do new caravans have that ours doesn't? The only things I can think of are a microwave and air conditioning, and not all new caravans have those either.
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Best Regards,
Colin
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21/2/2024 at 9:20am
Location: Cheshire
Outfit: Swift Escape
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As mentioned earlier the manufacturers follow each other round and the dealers try to persuade you to change every few years. We bought an Adria a few years ago as it had three tier bunks that were quite long, the top two over six feet; I have tall children. Every year when I dropped it off for its annual service, it was suggested I might like to change for a different van with a less useful layout and shorter bunks.
You will find a suitable unit, but you may have to wait for the manufacturers to produce one that suits you. In the meantime stick with what you have if the one you have still works. The £22,000 plus price tag for a new van buys an awful lot of refurbishment for the one you currently use, eg new upholstery, new foam for the cushions, even fridge, cooker, heater, etc.
Whatever you choose, I hope you get to enjoy it for years to come.
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21/2/2024 at 10:57pm
Location: East Herts
Outfit: 1992 Elddis Wisp 450CT + X Trail
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Quote: Originally posted by SamandRose on 21/2/2024
£20k for a trailer tent?! Holy cow.
I bought my current caravan as a newbie and paid £3k 7 years ago. It's been wonderful. Not sure I can count all the places we've taken it but they include Cornwall twice, Scotland twice, Northumberland twice, Kent twice, Yorkshire and Snowdonia multiple times plus Ireland, France and Switzerland.
So I really don't mind in the least that there now appears to be damp in one corner, the gas heater is knackered, the fridge has stopped working on electric and the carpet is basically threadbare. I don't have the time at the moment, never mind the skill to do any of the repairs or refurbs myself, so am trying to decide in my own mind whether it's worth paying various other people for them all to be done or to let it go as a fixer-upper to someone able to spend the time on it and replace with another in good condition.
Paying someone else to do the work on an old caravan is very questionable I would think. Unless you really love it, it's probably not worth it. Labour costs are the main part of any bill as it's very time consuming. I was quoted £2,000 plus to do the work on our caravan last year, and this on a caravan we paid £1,100 for 6 years previously. I ended up doing the work myself for around about £200, and that included the cost of a work platform which I still have. Hopefully I will get a few more years out of the caravan in which everything now works as it should. The only other job I did have to do a couple of years back was replacing the water heater. I took out the original one, which had catastrophically failed spilling water everywhere, and replacing it with a new electric one. If I couldn't do the work on our caravan myself we would probably have to give up caravanning as we wouldn't be able to afford to either repair it or replace it.
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Best Regards,
Colin
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