Well we finally bit the bullet and went with a Pre-rental Cruise America 28A. the final deciding factors were how CA had the units built and the amount of thought and design that went into creating convenience and comfort. The unit we picked out had 103,xxx miles on it. We have already racked up another 800 on it since we picked it up two weeks ago.
I have purchased many vehicles from dealers in the past and this has to be hands down the best experience I have ever had from a dealer, absolutely ZERO pressure. At first we thought they would get sick of us being in there 5 times prior looking at the models they had on display but each time Wayne (our sales guy) would always come up and chat with us and answer any questions we had no matter how silly. Wayne would also toss in some of his own personal experiences to help explain some things.
We had the RV picked out before it even went through the refurbishing process so we had to wait a couple weeks. When the day finally came to pick it up we went in with a modified RV purchasing check list and started going from front to rear inside and out. We had found a bunch of little things that Wayne had made a list of. We then took it for a test drive. To be honest this was probably the smoothest riding vehicle I've ever owned going down the road. It did have a bit of a pull towards the right. The oldest tire was early 2014 and all tires showed almost all new tread and no weather cracking. We returned from the test drive and said they have a sale!
Before the day of pickup we had negotiated on pricing. Now I will say this, everyone who has mentioned that Cruise America does not budge on the price is correct, however... they did budge on the awning and we got it installed for $200 instead of the regular $980 (IIRC). They also went through our list and fixed or replaced everything on that list. They recommended we drive it a bit more to verify the alignment does have a pull and if so they will fix and realign anything in the front end.
After we signed all the papers I drove it a few miles down the road to a friend who has a shop and works on RVs (along with cars). He was crawling around that thing for about 2hrs. The only thing he found was the transmission mount and the passenger side motor mount were worn and cracked. I am waiting for the service manager to get back from vacation but Wayne says it's something they would probably take care of. I did not get a service record like I mentioned in a previous post but I did get a driveline replacement parts list. The PCM was replaced in 2013 and the Transmission was replaced at 65,000 miles. Brakes are at about 80%. and the pass. front shock has a slight leak but I am planning on replacing shocks with Bilsteins anyways. My friend said its pretty solid for the mileage. Being an avid RV'er himself he could not believe some of the features the 28A had compared to what he has seen and owned. The "trunk" space is massive, very roomy on the inside. all the lights are LED and the 28A comes with a 10 watt charger on the roof for the house battery.
We opted not to get the extended warranty but it does come with a 12/12 driveline warranty and a 30 day full bumper to bumper warranty so we are putting some miles on it within the next 30 days to make sure everything is good to go.
Overall we are very pleased with the purchase and how Cruise America treated us.
