Are new Boats more reliable than new Motorhomes

[Jcorstorphine]

The reason I am asking this question is I wish to make a comparison between buying a new boat and buying a new motorhome. I have never bought a new boat with all of my boats (with the exception of the one I built myself) being second or third hand therfore I do not have a yardstick to measure the number of faults likely to be encountered with new boats.

However, last year I bought a new Motorhome (don't worry still have my boat) and it has been the worst purchase of my life. It has been off the road for about 12 weekends in the last 12 months, it has been back to the supplying dealer 4 times and into 4 different Peugeot dealers. Even with all the assorted domestic items fixed, it is still leaking water into the habitation area, it has taken a year for Peugeot to modify the front end to stop the engine being in a permanent shower, it refuses to reverse up even a slight incline without juddering and various other idiosyncrasies.

It has cost me over £350 in fuel with the number of times I have had to take it to the dealer and leave it for weeks at a time.

It seems that I am not alone with a very large number of new Motorhomes costing on average £40,000 all plagued with poor quality.

Can anyone who has purchased a new boat, give some idea of the number of problems one would expect to see in the first year.

Regards
John

 

[Ruffles]

My only knowledge of motor homes is from my parents who owned a 2nd hand Merc and a new Peugeot. They had issues with the latter but they were all fixed by a commercial service centre. The car dealers were worse than useless - I suspect they would have been subcontracting to a van centre anyway.

 

[William_H]

Well a boat especially but also with a motor home you are concerned about a number of different systems. All of which are liable to failure probably mopre so on a boat with the added moist air for corrosion.
I am sorry you are so dissapointed in your new motor home. Presumably it a commercial vehicle modified to motor home. You certainly can expect the basic vehicle systems to be well designed from years of experience (from the commercial version). However as with new cars they are very complex and often result isn a lot of warranty work and dissapointment. Though far more complex because of the numbers produced you should get a much more mature product.

Boats on the other hand are not produced in huge numbers and are often different form one another so new design problems pop up. Boats are much simpler than a vehicle.
However in both cases the domestic devices can all give problems which to a large degree are out of the control of the seller.

So to the question I dunno' I won't be buying a new motor home or new boat at least second hand you must expect failure. olewill

 

[BrendanS]

Motor homes and boats come into the same category. Not off the shelf from large companies, they are both built in small quantities by specialists (compared to large volume car sales which tend to be global as well as large volume).

So will suffer faults and low resources to fix problems.

 

[ytd]

no. I had a winnebago on a toyota chassis in the US that was super reliable. Only thing that went wrong with it was a leak in the rain. Easily fixed with some silicone. Boat has been reasonable (now 4 yrs old) but there have been electrical and rigging faults. On the other hand the interior of the bavaria is much easier to live with than the winnebago was with its brown carpet and floral curtains.

 

[moondancer]

The Peugeot base that the motorhome is built on has, I believe, a known fault when reversing uphill where severe vibration can set in that can even destroy the gearbox. This is well known apparently and the makers are trying to identify a fix. It was the feature of an article in this month's caravan club magazine. They were amazed that such a manufacturer failed to test for such a thing.

 

[jtwebb]

I own a sailing boat, Dehler 36CWS, and a motorhome, Carthago Chic i47. The motorhome is on the older Fiat chassis, not the new one with the leaky bonnet and self wrecking transmission. The motorvan is more reliable than the boat as there is less to go wrongl no sails or rigging, no fancy instruments, no radar. However, I can fix the boat myself more than the motorvan. The motorvan currently has a broken driver window motor (or associated bit) and Carthago in Germany are being unbelievably useless. If I have a problem with the boat it is generally simpler to fix! We had a different motorhome before and that was reliable. However, my wife says too many possessions!

 

[Jcorstorphine]

Thanks for all the replies, have just heard today that my van with 6000 miles on the clock and one year old needs two new rear springs. Wish Westerly were still in business and made Motorhomes.
John