Many RV manufacturers seem to have decided, after the Great Recession, that they should stop making good products and start making good money. Year after year quality slips and the price of an RV creeps up. However, consider this: RV’s are built for recreation. If every manufacturer built their product to last forever, RV prices would soar and many people would not be able to enjoy the lifestyle.
Before we can answer the question of who builds the best RV we need to know a little about the differences between brands.
Thor and Forest River combined build about 83% of the RV’s sold today. Let’s take a look at how many brand names are covered by these two companies.
Thor subsidiaries include:
Airstream
Bison Coach
Breckenridge
CrossRoads RV
Cruiser RV
Dutchmen RV
DRV (Mobile Suites)
Entegra Coach
Heartland RV
Highland Ridge
Jayco, Inc
Keystone RV
KZ RV
Livin Lite RV
Redwood RV
Starcraft
Thor Motor Coach (Four Winds International and Damon Motor Coach)
Venture RV
Just to point out how many brands are included in each one of the above subsidiaries, I will breakdown Keystone’s fifth wheel brands:
Keystone RV fifth wheel Brands include:
Cougar
Copper Canyon
Everest
Fuzion
Hornet
Laredo
Montana
Mountaineer
Raptor
Springdale
Sydney
With two companies building about 83% of the RV’s on the market, there is little quality difference among the brands. Each production line has been streamlined and the profits have been maximized across all of the brands. The typical warranty period is one year on a new RV.
Consider this: If you buy a new RV but aren’t quite ready to full time yet and that RV sits through a long winter, you may have already lost half of your warranty period and have yet to use or test your new RV.
Some of the best quality used RV’s (no longer in business) are:
Teton Homes
Nu-Wa Hitchhiker
Excel
King of the Road
Country Coach
Some of the best quality new or used RV’s (current manufacturers) are:
New Horizons RV
Tiffin
Winnebago