The sad state of the RV industry....

[Diesel-Lover]

Remember the happy 70s and the late 60s when we were happy to buy sub grade vehicles from the big auto makers who had the market protected bigly. Well then came the entry by some savvy quality driven automakers out to set a high bar, and well rest is history. RV industry is content on shoveling out shoddy assembled vehicles, low to no RnD and QC. No ownership of components and short if any warranty. So if your fridge breaks after 12 months go see the fridge maker, if the alternator breaks its the chassis maker, if the generator then yea the generator maker. Imagine all of us chasing down takata for air bags not once but multiple times... Yes the RV industry is broken there are some rich RV owners that do not care, and love to spend lots of dough servicing their white elephants and others to whom the "maintenance" of the RV is a way of life. I own an RV not for it to take over my life, but to add to my life ie.. able to enjoy it with reasonable maintenance and service. Yes I had a 67 Cuda wow, a 68 mustang wow again, but my 70's VW mini bus gosh that was like made to run not made to need service. When I went of it sat for 6 years, kids had played in it and left all the windows open for gosh knows how long, I arrived in mid winter, had to literally shovel snow out of it, added 5 gallons of premium fuel, connected jumper cables, sprayed some starter fluid for good measure and golly gees it started up and in 2 minutes was idling! Drove it to the nearest gas station got an oil change and my rims straightened they were out of round, was told the tires needed to be driven on at a reasonable speed below 50 for about an hour to make em round again and replaced soon as they were dry rotting, got a couple of inner tubes to be safe. Loaded it up and filled the tank and off I went on a 800 mile trip. That is one heck of a reliable vehicle, safety technology had changed a lot, but it was running. A month later I was running an errand and a kid made me an offer I could not refuse so I sold it to him. No heat so had put in an RV furnace at a cylinder hanging off the back. He liked that and paid extra for that modification too.


Back to the RV industry its amazing how inefficient the system is and how well they are able to shirk responsibility for their products and how little the buying public expects from them in the form of warranty and ownership of their design and components. Can you imagine if Hyundai came out with an RV 10 yr 100K miles drive line warranty, 6 yrs bumper to bumper. Yes those cars are quality built, drive a Genesis or the kia Credenza and see quality and warranty. Yes if Cadillac would provide the same warranty I would be first in line, same for Buick but they don't and I miss the Pontiac brand a whole lot, Oldsmobile not so much.

[MarinerGeoff]

I’m very late after these postings - but I was considering the evidence of so much poor quality in the RV industry - I looked for “Japanese” and came upon this discussion
Your letter hits the nail very squarely on the head.
People will scream at government interference - but I had 27 years at sea - I’ve been retired 30 years.
The French don’t allow construction unless it’s to certain agreed standards. The UK purchaser of a vessel relies on Lloyds A1 standards -(Forget purchasing UZ cars but maybe things have changed)
If we had something similar for agreed standards for RV’s - maybe depreciation would be less and we would have lower maintenance.

[AJMike]

Originally Posted by MarinerGeoff

If we had something similar for agreed standards for RV’s - maybe depreciation would be less and we would have lower maintenance.

Yes, along with even higher price tags.