We are sure like many of you that the decision of what to buy causes far more deliberation than anything else in the selection of your Recreational Vehicle (RV). Before purchasing your vehicle a clear understanding of what is available on the market must be identified and fully understood. This applies to both the new and used vehicles.
To help ourselves we travelled to a large number of dealerships over several months. This allowed us to spend plenty of time looking and sitting inside the vehicles. This really helped us to get an understanding of how the various options and layouts would, or would not, work for us. How we would relax, how we would eat, sleep, use of the bathroom facilities, storage etc. We strongly advice that you do not rush this key part of the selection process. The longer you spend the better your final decision be.
It also gave us a lot of time to speak to the dealerships that, as you would expect, were more than happy to spend time informing us of the pros and cons of owning a caravan, campervan or motorhome. Even the pushy sales persons still had plenty valuable information for us to consider.
It was during this early stage of the process that we made the decision to purchase a relatively new vehicle and from a dealership we felt were the right people to deal with from our point of view. Having looked at several used vehicles, I personally, was very nervous of parting with a large amount of cash to a member of the public I had never met and would have virtually no comeback should there be any mechanical, electrical or legal issues that were not made clear at the point of purchase. At this same point we also realised that we wanted the vehicle to still have a certain amount of dealership and manufacturer’s warranty protection.
There are numerous ways that one can go about such a detailed assessment, below is the basis of how we set about the task. We hope you find it helpful or at least thought provoking enough so that you too can make a considered decision that is right for your own specific needs and requirements. We are sure that some will completely disagree with our own analysis and reasoning but this is how we reasoned and rationalised various decisions that were important to us.
An individual or couple for example, who are active, adventurous, love the greater outdoors, happy to move around without all the luxuries of home and love to wild camp and as much as possible may well find their own assessment indicates that a campervan (or panel van) may be the vehicle for them. On the other hand a couple with children may well decide that the caravan offers them the better family holiday option.
So with the above in mind, we next set about identifying what type of RV we believed was the right choice for us; would it be a caravan, campervan (including Panel Vans) or motorhome? Please note, our assessment scores below are also based on two, active, semi-retired +50 year old adults.
Despite carrying out the above exercise with an open mind as much as possible, we must confess that we would not have considered a caravan personally as we had no desire to consider towing. For this reason we have marked down the caravan option accordingly. For those willing to tow a caravan the scoring would be considerably different.
This said we feel it would only skew our own scoring exercise in relation to just the caravan and campervan options. Therefore, for us and our needs and wants the motorhome option would have always resulted in it being the best option for ourselves for many other reasons.
Clearly, such a selection process is highly, highly, subjective and flawed in a number of ways but it did help us learn a great deal more about the options, ourselves and of what is important to us, far more than if we had not done this.
Some people have suggested “try before you buy”. On the face of it this does sound like a good idea, and for a large number of people it probably is. However, for us we did not think this was the right way to go. With so many important selection criteria we don’t believe a few days a Caravan, Campervan or Motorhome answer enough questions and therefore, for us, not a cost effective option.
Our view is that you will learn so much by visiting reputable dealerships and simple sitting in all their vehicles, for long periods of time, and ask yourself all the questions you need answers to. This approach will get you a long way down the selection process.
We hope this has been helpful and provoked plenty of thoughts and ideas. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to chat more.
