You'll hear horror stories about all the makes of UK caravans, and in truth quality control in caravans lags way behind that of car manufacturers.
My advice is to have a good look around the showrooms to find your ideal caravan, but talk to the salesmen to find out how seriously they take pre-delivery inspections. Some dealers seem to hardly check caravans at all and wait for customers to come back with warranty claims, while others will take much trouble to show you right round your caravan and then give you as much time as you need to check it yourself for obvious faults.
Also, it may be worth looking for manufacturers who no longer use wood in the wall, ceiling and floor construction, instead using non-rotting alternatives.
I've only bought one caravan, which I still have, and it's been great. The one issue I had was dealt with very swiftly by, er, Swift. I suspect most people have no trouble.
But if you look at second-hand caravans, they seem to go on forever, which says something.
------------- Camping Gear expands so as to fill the space available for its transportation.
We have had 3 caravans from new. Our first two were made by Bailey and we didn't have a single issue with either of them. This made us complacent as we assumed this was the same for everyone.
We wanted a new van this year and after looking around, we liked the layout of a particular Swift model and placed an order. It arrived in February and so far we are up to 14 warranty issues, some small, others more significant. Our dealer has been very good at dealing with these for us but we live 60 miles away so it is a pain in the neck to have to take it up for the work to be done.
This is only our experience and I am sure there will be loads of people who have had no problems with their swifts and endless problems with a Bailey. If I was doing it over again I would buy from a local dealer, even if it is a bit more expensive, as if/when things go wrong, being able to get them fixed without having to drive half way across the country is important. I also wouldn't touch a Swift again but maybe we were just unlucky. Be very wary of a dealer telling you that you can go to any dealer to get warranty work done as this might be the case theoretically but in practice, we rang 7 dealers closer to us than the one we bought from and they all refused to take on the warranty work as we didn't buy from them.
It doesn't go by make. They all send out good vans and duds.
A lot is down to the dealer who is supposed to do a pre-sale inspection. Some do, some don't and let the purchaser discover all the little things that were bodged in the factory.
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Topic: What caravan
