Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2013 14:33:34 -0600
Reply-To: mcneely4@COX.NET
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Dave Mcneely <mcneely4@COX.NET>
Subject: Re: Friday Philosophy: On Community
In-Reply-To: <011f01ce0c78$b132fa40$1398eec0$@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
---- Stuart MacMillan <stuartmacm@gmail.com> wrote:
> Pricing is on the PDF specification download. Pre-VAT price for the base model is about 30,000 pounds, much less than the VW California at 37,000 pounds. You are right about the US conversions, but Americans seem to want all this stuff. I think a reasonable conversion could be done for $10k to $15k over the price of the vehicle, and an "empty" Transit chassis should be in the $20s, maybe low $30s with options.
Thanks for the pointer. I guess I am dense. I had looked at that link, but not at the second page. Of course, I can't read it, given the tiny text.
Well, Americans do buy the stuff, but without providing the alternative, how do the sellers know that we would not buy it? There is not a conversion in the market in this country that has the features this one offers without all the fol-de-rol. I don't need a television antenna (or a television, either), a microwave, on-demand hot water, leveling jacks (I can handle that with a level and wooden blocks), ............ . I don't need slide out sides. What I do need is a bed, a stove, a sink, storage, a refrigerator, maybe a heater, but I don't have that now and do ok. I don't need leather seats -- the seats and fabric in my Vanagon are 22 years old and the camper has 170K miles. They clean up to look like new. Maybe I should buy the danged van and get to work to fit it out myself. Take a lesson from William Least Heat-Moon and _Blue Highways_. The new Ford will offer fuel mileage as good or better than the Vanagon, and will run cleaner. The latter two points are big sticking points for me for any big van available in the U.S. currently.
I just want a camper like I have now but reliable enough for me and the wife to trust. I'm getting too old to crawl around in the mud and gravel in order to beat on the starter with a club, or to spend a week in some out of the way little town while I wait for a part or get something jury rigged. And of course, we still want to poke into places where we are unlikely to see another vehicle for a few days (and that is getting harder and harder to do anyway, in the lower 48). I'd like to believe we'll get back when we do that.
We'll see.
>
> We'll see.
>
> Stuart
>
> > If not, maybe the future Ford Transit conversions will be sensible:
> > http://westfalia-ford.co.uk/elevated%20roof/index.html $46,000 base
> > price in Britain. I wonder what Sportsmobile or Roadtrek would charge for theirs.
>
> Where did you get that price? If I could buy one of these in the U.S. for that price today, I'd do it immediately. mcneely But of course, the converters you mentioned would not produce the same camper. They could be doing so on the chassis they build on today, but they don't. They put everything imaginable beyond reasonable into them, including building slide-out rooms into Sprinter bodies.
>
> Good grief!!
> David McNeely
>
--
David McNeely
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