Skilled RV workers.

jplante4 wrote:
There's a limit to the size of the market for high end campers and motor homes. That limit is set by the number of people who can afford it. In order to grow your business, you need to stop catering only to the well-to-do and produce a product that can be obtained by middle class consumers, who have a wide range of choices on what to do with their disposable income. While Thurston Howell III will nickel and dime you over quality, penny wise consumers are only worried about price and bang for the buck. This explains the current state of the airline industry, and the same complaints are happening there. People pick flights by price only, then complain about the lack of leg room.

Manufacturers have no choice but to cut corners. They can't cut energy costs, taxes or cost of some materials (everyone pays the same for a Freightliner chassis). The only way to cut employee costs is to let people go, and when you do that you cut capacity, making things worse. Quality of material and craftsmanship are easy things to cut. It would happen in the airline industry if the FAA hadn't set at least minimum certification standards for airplanes.

If the quality is that bad, consumers should spent their recreational dollar on other things or the higher quality RVs. The makers of the junk will go away.

Loan me about $50,000 and I'll pick up the rest so I can afford to get one of those perfect built RV's you speak of.
RVs are no different than anything else out there for sale. There's a reason that you have the option to by a Fiat 500 or a Lexus. Not everyone's rolling in dough like you.
A big part of the problem is the economy is good right now. Enough people are working and feeling comfortable enough to go out and buy an RV. Plus more and more older folks are retiring and looking to get an RV. All RV MFGs are running at full speed right now. Hence the need for bodies. It's not like there's a bunch of experienced RV assemblers sitting at home like in 2008-9 from the recession.
I was in commercial construction for 30 years. When things go slow we laid off the less skilled. When things picked up they got hired back.
The other issue is the way RV are built. It's a 70s style of construction and labor technics. More automation would help alleviate human mistakes. But it's still humans doing most of the assembly.
I guess if we did it your way and eliminated all the low to mid range models then the MFGs could layoff most of their workers, which would weed out the lesser skilled and then the best worker would just be building those perfect RVs you talk about. My guess is that RV sales would drop about 90% by doing that.