gmw photos wrote:
RobertRyan wrote:
....snip.....
...... So people go to Off Road Caravans instead. Australia is not the US and Off Road RVing makes up a large part of activities . Many Off Road areas bigger than the whole State of Idaho. It is hard to get an idea if your are from the US or Europe
Which is a large part of why I have said for a long time, that "we have what we need" here in the USA market, ( and you, Robt, have what you need ) regarding trailers. Folks often come on these boards and lament the fact that we do not have long travel softly sprung independent suspension on our trailers. There is a reason for that. We don't need it ( mostly ). Most of our towing is done on relatively smooth paved roads at higher speeds. Long travel soft suspension is "not" what you want for our kind of towing.
You have to applaud Jayco Aus for giving fifth wheels a try. You can do market research, and focus groups and all the rest, but there ain't nothing like throwing a big handful of product into the real market to find out whether it will fly or not.
Maybe superficial similarities and many overlapping needs, in the US and Australia as regards RV's but their are some big differences in other aspects of the RV's they want.
Prior to Jayco being the biggest single manufacture here( AVAN I think is the second biggest, mass producer)
Viscount Caravans had a similar market share. They changed many aspects of their Caravans, that were not popular that led to their demise
Viscount Caravans triple axle from the early 1970's , they had the same market share as Jayco now. Unlike Jayco, they did not survive their mistakes.
Caravans are towed here at normal highway speeds of roughly 70mph or 110kmh, the independent, and or airbag suspensions cope very well, they are not inverted springs
Vast array of different suspension and frame systems to handle Off Road and highway cruising
