Tiffin vs Newmar

[Coached]

This is an interesting thread, and, as I said a little earlier I would be considering other brands as well as these two at this price. We had an '08 Tiffin Phaeton 42' tag that we bought new in the Fall of '07 (took delivery 12/12/07) which we kept for over three years and about 37K miles. We loved it. It went back to Red Bay once for major remedial work to be done on it, all on Mr. Tiffin's dime and without much fuss or bother. We had to have some serious remedial work done here in Ontario, some at the Dealer and some at a Spartan / Cummins truck facility, again all paid by Tiffin with no questions. We had an '06 40' HR Ambassador for two years prior to that and really experienced no problems at all other than having the Dealer swap out the goofy Goodyears for Michelin, man. Now we have the AC Revolution. It too has been back to the factory, several times now in fact and, again, no fuss or bother about fixing things. The difference I see is that with the AC they are fixing things that simply broke or malfunctioned or they are working to make our Coach "perfect" for us. With the Tiffin they were always fixing or replacing things that either should or should not have been there in the first place or, in most cases, recovering from poor engineering or workmanship; often a combination of both. I will say that the new Owner of our old Coach has one heck of a nice vehicle now however. When we were shopping this time we took about a year and narrowed it down to our current AC, Newmar, Winnie 42' Tour, and a hesitant look at Monaco ( now I wish Entegra had more of a presence at last year's Tampa show). For us this time, Tiffin wasn't in the running due to relative price, previous Quality Control experiences and, quite frankly, inferior paint (at least on the one in Tampa) along with a relatively untried chassis and the lack of a full wall slide. Trust me, full wall slides make all the difference in the World; I really appreciate that now after a year or so. Tiffin does sell allot of Motor Homes, more than anyone in fact, and they do provide great service if you're willing to go to Red Bay but, the fact is they're constantly fixing the same (major?) things over and over again instead of eliminating the cause(s) in the first place. It was really interesting to walk up to a Phaeton and a Bus and look carefully in the front wheel wells. Lots of stuff in there hangin' out, snakin' around things and sprayed with lots of foamy stuff. Looked inside the same wheel well on my AC and ......... nothin', you can see right through to the other wheel well with just clear air in there - all the "stuff" is inside the chassis rails where it belongs? Simple observation perhaps but it had quite an impact on me. Oh yeah, the Michelins in those wheel wells are at least one size bigger than the other Guys - makes a difference.