After several negotiating sessions with two different dealers we finally made our decision today on a motorhome. We originally were leaning toward buying a 2008 Tiffin Allegro Bus off of Lazy Days RV center in Tampa, Florida. Our two choices were always Newmar and Tiffin. The Tiffin Allegro Bus was nice but had been neglected and needed several repairs. In fact, there was a total of three pages of things that were done to the motorhome. We were at the previous owners house yesterday. I bought his tow bar since he pulled a truck almost identical to ours. He lives in Cape Coral, Florida on an inter coastal waterway with more toys than you can imagine. He has boats, motorcycles, scooters, four wheelers etc. etc. He has more money than he does time. I spent about an hour rounding up and removing parts off of his truck for the tow bar we were buying. I learned his profession is a printing press mechanic. He travels all over the country working on printing presses and based on his house, furnishings, toys etc. etc. he must be a damn good printing press mechanic. He shared with me his thoughts of the motorhome we were considering as we were working on his truck. Basically he used it and did little to nothing to maintain it according to the maintenance schedule. He sold it to Lazy Days at a wholesale price. He paid $360k in 2008 sold it in 2013 for $141k. We decided early in the week we didn't want this unit and our visit to his house confirmed our decision. We let Lazy Days know our decision around Tuesday. Wednesday we got several calls with promises that everything would be taken care of. We agreed to come up on Saturday and look at the unit again. Then I noticed on some documents they sent us, that were to contain everything they did to the unit, failed to list a couple of items they said they repaired. I sent them an email pointing this out to them. While I was golfing the next day a Sales Manager called Janet and ask her if we wanted the unit because he had someone else who wanted it. She had him call me later in the evening. He tried to pressure me into taking the unit I told him I wouldn't commit to anything until we had our rv tech perform an inspection the next week. He told me that was a waste of money because they have already fixed everything that was inoperable.
Today I let another dealer in Fort Myers, Florida know we wouldn't be able to make it to his dealership today because we were headed to Lazy Days in Tampa. He called back and said if we could stop their first he would make sure we wouldn't need to drive the two hours north on 75 to Tampa to visit the Lazy Days dealer. The deal he said was not possible for the last seven days he said was now possible. In any event we bought a new Newmar Ventana 43 foot motorhome from North Trail RV. It is technically a year old since it is a 2012 but it is brand new. Being a year old really helped in getting them to lower the price considerably compared to the 2013 models but they should since it is worth less. This was the one with only one bathroom instead of the bath and a half that more people seem to want these days. This motorhome is a lower end model for big diesel pushers manufactured by Newmar but we are very happy with it. Now I am working on mounting the base plates to accept the tow bar and the air brake actuator on my truck so the truck brakes work while we are towing it behind the motorhome. Lucky for us our truck is a very good, but big, vehicle to be towed four wheels down. We will be at close to 70 feet when hooked up to the motorhome. It should be interesting me pulling out of their parking lot into four lanes of traffic. They told me it will be easy compared to hauling our fifth wheel around. We went for a ride in the motorhome today but I didn't want to drive it. I told the salesman I have researched it and know from others with motorhome experience that it is a great driving motorhome. I will wait until we are taking it home to get my first experience driving a motorhome. I should sell tickets and load up the back full of people who want to be entertained or scared shitless. Below are a few pictures.
The main reason we went with the Newmar motorhome and not a Tiffin is two fold. First, the salesman at North Trail Rv was fantastic. He told us he previously worked in the service area and justed started selling motorhomes two months ago. When we were haggling back and forth I told him we may need to sit down with the owner instead of just his boss. He told me we could do that if we needed to because he did know the owner pretty well. We later learned, after we agreed to the deal, he was the owners son. We told him while agreeing to the deal one of the main reasons we were buying the motorhome was because of him. Secondly, I spoke to employees at the Newmar factory last week and explained what we were considering purchasing partly due to their factory being about 25 miles from our home in Indiana. They explained we were welcome to bring the unit in there for any issues or modifications we may have. In fact, he said they have Newmar owners who have never taken their motorhomes to dealers but always bring it back to the factory.
