Well this trip has been interesting. I have seen three brand new Entegra motorhomes and talked to the owners. The first one I talked to went to Motor home specialists to see the Realm but they did not have one to show them and they did have the Realm in stock and they did not like the IH. Too big and too boxy and too expensive for what it was. I see they are now 1.3mm msrp and 899K listed price. Then I met two new owners here of the Cornerstone. There is an 8 month backlog for them. They are cheaper then the IH and these owners liked them better for the money though they would have looked at the Realm. I think that FT needs to push this Realm more then just at MHS and they might have a winner on their hands. It is in the right price point and the IH seems not to be priced competitively. If you are going to spend that money you will get a bus. Interesting conversation nd they will be at the Balloon fest with us so Ia m sure there will be more conversations. I know this is not a large sample but three owners of new coaches have looked at foretravel coaches and chose a different brand and it is interesting to talk to them and I will be interested to see how many Realm sell. I will admit that the Cornerstone is cheaper then the FT in cost but that is the market they are competing and the market they used to sell in when they made 300 coaches a year.
Will be interesting to hear how their first year of ownership goes. From what I've read on IRV2, quality is not job 1 at Entegra.
The guy next to me mentioned about two months of teething pains. I am very interested in how the realm works out.
JOHN, Like to talk to you about your Born Free if you would care to. Let me know best contact method.
Dan
847 772 1409
i can call u tomorrow
We have some friends with an Entegra, it doesn't seem to be able to get out of the driveway with out a problem. It also looks like it has a lot of cabinet space, in reality most of them are not very deep. I have also had an occasion to do a little work on it, and from a quick inspection the build quality is not even close to our coaches, Electrics in the bays with no covers, exposed steel bracing not painted very well, plastic dash boards, slide issues. I guess time will tell how they work out.
Probably a should be a whole other topic, but I would like to see Foretravel jump into the 3-500K market for a "production line" good quality coach without all the bells an whistles and glitz, which is still a big chunk of change for most folks. But if I had all the answers I wouldn't be riding around in a 16 year old motor home.
The cost of a 2004 Foretravel U320 extended to today's prices, eleven model years later, at 3 percent annual inflation, would approximately equal the cost of a 2015 Foretravel ih45. And, would be a lot more expensive than a 2015 Realm. Bottom line, the most expensive Foretravel today is about the same cost in real dollars as the most expensive Foretravel cost in 2004.
If past history in the motorhome biz is any guide it takes two two year cycles to get started building a high build quality coach.
If we built one ourselves today and upon completion had a laundry list of things wrong we would still have to use up the parts already ordered.
Foretravel lasted long enough to have 30 years of continious changes and improvements by the time my 97 was built and the progression shows.
I remembef customers telling me in the 80's that they liked my new grand villas a lot but had learned long ago to never buy the first year of any new product.
Hard to tell them they were incorrect.
A high quality lower content coach would appeal to a well informed buyer but they are not as common as one might expect. (As demonstrated by the thinly veneered crap passed off as the run of the mill RV) The deep pocket folks don't sweat long term reliability as much as the rest of us and the shallow pocket folks might see the value but cant afford the cost of entry.
The theoretical well informed buyer realizes that a used high end coach is a very good way to go leading us back where we started (and are now).
Love high end content, and as many bells and whistles as will fit but do want to make sure the systems are fault tolerant, independent, or easily over-ridden.
A brand new $500K coach would likely not have the build quality or content that a 15 year old U320 has at 6-10 times the price...
Well, I will say it this way, something has to change and I am glad they are making the Realm. The fact is that they are not producing enough IH coaches right now to thrive. They hedged last year at the GV and said they were making 20 coaches. Now if you think about the 12 command coaches on the front engine chassis and the 15 they have on order for the Realm that is more coaches then they sold that were IHs last year. SO that is a great big deal and they may find that the Realm is going to take off. I have heard now three people who have other coaches talk about it and I have not had anyone really talk about the IH except saying too big and expensive. The fact of the matter is that you can say it is the same dollar cost as it was when they made a U320 a few years ago but the market is telling us that the concept of adjusting for inflation but not adjusting for economies in manufacturing means they are not able to sell enough. I am watching this Realm very closely as I think it is the way that FT is going to finally grow. If you look at the Phenix and the Newmar Essex and realize they came out at the same time. Newmar hit 1000 Essex coaches a year ago and I do not know how many Phenixs are out there but they did not get anywhere close. They are and were priced at the same price point. The Realm is priced as competition to the new King Aire and is being marketed as such. I think it could be a winner but time will tell.