rlw999 wrote:
toedtoes wrote:
So for most people, paying for a better quality vehicle is a no brainer. But for an RV, many folks will forego quality to get a better price, or get the floorplan or size they want.
I think the floorplan variety is part of the problem - like look at Forest River - they have 4 bumper pull travel trailer sub-brands (and that doesn't even include their fifth wheel and toy haulers), and each of those sub-brands has between 10 to 17 different floorplans.
There's no way they can develop custom jigs and other tooling devoted to each floorplan when they need to assemble 40 different varieties of TT, and they also can't develop best practices for how to assemble them because lessons learned on cable routing or how to mount the cabinets more securely aren't the same for each floorplan.
I wish each manufacturer would have fewer choices in length and floorplan but more focus on quality.
But floorplan, apparently, is what sells -- it's easy to walk into an RV and see that the bed and bathroom are where you want them, it's much harder to see that they routed a wiring harness under the sewer line so it's going to chafe and wear through in a few months.
I always liked how Irv Perch handled that with the American Clippers. Because they were molded fiberglass shells, he was limited. A window move meant a separate mold for that wall, which was very expensive. So of his 21ft models, he only had two molds. One was used for the rear kitchen and side kitchen layouts. The outside storage, windows, door, fridge, furnace, tanks, and water heater remained in the same locations so wiring, piping, etc, was standardized. The second mold was specific to the bunkhouse layout. If you see a clipper on the road, you can easily idenify a bunkhouse because of the windows and door placement. This was the only model that had different placement of fridge, furnace, etc.
Even the 24ft models maintained the same basic positioning of those items. So, there was little variation to the hidden build.
Where he gave options were in things like a standard dinette versus an L shaped dinette, or two chairs and cabinet versus a couch. They were cosmetic differences only. Between the 3 molds, he offered 27 floorplans, but the build centered on only 4 variations (side kitchen, rear kitchen, bunkhouse, 24ft).
