[David]

Good job. I’ve been thinking that newbies need something like that to put things in perspective.

[Chip & Pam]

Jon

Your first time buyers write up was excellent!!! Every line was right on point with great advice for both old and new buyers.

Gary

[John]

Jon,

Fantastic article! Very useful and to the point information. I do question your bringing all your clothes and food in and out every trip though. You may need to use your coach more 🙂

Tim, Per, me, and the rest of us wanna/will be’s would have had a lot less questions to pester you guys with had this been out earlier.

Tim,

Congratulations on your new coach! Looks awesome and looking forward to hearing how the first couple trips go.

[Archived]

Kurt, seasons change, Di prefers to do laundry in the house, so we unload the laundry. We also fill the refrigerator just in case we end up on a barren landscape with no stores closer than 100 miles. Then there are shoes, books, magazines, meds, etc.

I have learned not to interfere, just to help carry the stuff in and out.

When I go alone it is not unusual for me to just carry everything I need to bring in a tote. If I forget or need anything I can usually find a store.

If she reads this, I am in trouble.

[Jimmy]

“I have learned not to interfere, just to help carry the stuff in and out.” – Sage advice and Di would be happy with your post and proud of you 🙂

[Archived]

This is a very nice writeup, and it covers many great points in buying an used Prevost. Much of it applies to buying just about any used vehicle (from cars, motorcycles, to airplanes) which I personally purchased hundreds (when it comes to cars) of. I owned two car dealerships in the past (new cars), and we also had the used lot (to dispose the tradeins), so we were always “hunting” for good used cars, in order to keep used (“pre owned”!) car lot full, in order to keep the people employed. We didn’t have enough quality tradeins on our new lineup.

Maintenance records, overal mechanics, electrical, etc. condition IS VERY important (not “yelling” here, just emphasizing), however………..to me the process is very similar how I have chosen my wife. If you meed a woman (or Prevost), and she is ugly (whatever your individual definition of “ugly” is), you will not have a chance to find out if she is a nice person. She might be a genius, loving, responsible, great in the kitchen (or bed),…….but no “eye appeal”! Some of you might be different there, and you might strike a conversation (invite on a date) a woman that is ugly (to YOU), but I doubt it.

Many a time you (meaning me) meet a gorgeous woman that is “high maintenance”, shallow, dumb, with character flaws galore,……..and after a date (or few), you walk away. Same with machinery.

That’s why I joined this forum. Wife and I decided that we like Prevost (most of them on the outside), and few of them on the inside. When one particular one showed up on the “radar”, we decided to try to find everything humanly possible about it, and then take it on the “date”. No, we didn’t have financing “in place”, and didn’t have a clue about RV financing (we purchased our curent motorhome for cash we had around the house). When we bought most all of our vehicles, we liked something first (in pictures), than we went to see it (MANY disappointments!), and then we called the brokerage, and told them to figure it out, and give us the “bottom line”. This is exactly how we went about purchasing our first Prevost.

Since we are interested in older Prevosts (that are hard or imposible to finance) we can not “figure out how to pay for it first”. Our money earns money (doesn’t everyone’s?). How much you pull out of the well earning account, pay potential penalties, kick yourself into a different tax bracket, and hope that “someday” you will run into the coach that “speaks” to you? And then you do (run into THAT one!). And she is gorgeous, you take it on the “date”, and she turns out to be high maintenance (too much to “zero out”), comes with all kinds of flaws, and you walk away. In the meantime, you are losing money (your “target amount” is sitting in the checking account!).

But we are learning! Now we know what years can still be financed without problems, and we are targeting those years exclusively. Hopefully one that has the exterior/interior combo we can “live with” (compromise), will show up, we will take it on the date, pay someone that checks these out for living…..and hopefully drive it home.

It has to be without slides, with stainless on the outside, no “wild” graphics, dark wood on the inside, tile and wood on the floor. If it needs “sweat equity”, no problem. New tires, batteries, new flooring, no problem. If there are no records, price is not in line with stuff that needs to be addressed befor it can be driven cross country………no “date”.

You can call me shallow, superficial (or anything else!), but that’s how I bought (and sold) untold number of vehicles (my dealerships had combined sales of 4-6 hundred units per month, new and used together) in my lifetime. It worked for me.

I hope I didn’t bore you all with my rant, or God forbid offended anyone?

When I find “the girl” I like, I’ll be back to pick your brains again. That’s what these forums are for, right?

[Archived]

I hope nobody considers a Prevost an investment. It is not. It is an expensive toy that depreciates.

Maybe it was not wise to pay cash for my coaches, but I have tried to never finance non-business purchases. I know it is a struggle to decide if you want a bus worse than you want your money, especially knowing you can almost kiss that money, or a big part of it goodbye.

But our coach is a lifestyle. I think everyone will agree while we cannot quantify it, we get far more back from coach ownerhip in the form of friends and what the coach allows us to do, than it costs us. I do know there is very little that makes us as happy as when we are with friends and using our coach.

And nothing makes people who sell coaches, whether they are converters, brokers or private individuals as ahppy as selling a coach, so all of you out there thinking about a coach, go buy one and everyone gets happy.

[Archived]

Excellent Jon!

This is certainly helpful, but all the other articles on this forum and attending the seminar helped cement what we were looking for and to ask the right questions.

As I’m discovering, no matter how much I read before, nothing could have actually totally prepared me for the real thing … but more knowledge certainly helps avoiding a non-educated and potentially disasterous purchase.

[Archived]

If it is any comfort Tim, I think when we are new to the coach we tend to look at the whole thing and see nothing but complexity.

But in reality our coaches are really a whole bunch of systems, devices, and components all going down the road together. When you can separate things in your mind to the various individual systems or sub systems or devices it begins to be less overwhelming and scary.

Unless something has changed I find the folks that design and build our coaches employ a great deal of logic to how the coach is designed and built. The fact that you have access to just about everything you could ever want to know about the chassis from the Prevost site is a big help. The conversiojn part is probably not as well documented, but probably is easily understood, or if needed has a great number of other owners on the forum able to answer your quesitons. There will come a time when you are the one leading the new guy and answering his questions

[Peter]

We are new to the forum as perspective coach owners. Since our boys have left for the military we have began to consolidate our crap and have listed the house for sale. We have been camping for many years and now find we are ready to hit the road after several years of research. This article was what we needed to learn about being a Prevost owner. Jon has been an exceptional source of information as well. Thank you for the great information. It was great and we hope to learn more.

Chuck and Joanne

[Bill]

Great information!