Trading Up Is Hard To Do (within a budget!)

As is the norm, our quest for a roomier RV began in earnest at an RV show. We looked at travel trailers longer than our own 20-foot Coachmen. We investigated Class C, Class A, and the new Class B’s that were sort of a narrow camper, built on a Sprinter chassis.  

Plenty of RV Shows Helped Us To Narrow Our Choices

We felt the Sprinters (Winnebago Travato, Airstream Interstate, Chinook Countryside, etc.) were a bit too small and way more expensive than we would find comfortable. The larger class B-Plus units were attractive, but we just couldn’t see ourselves spending that much money. 

Airstream Interstate Class B Sprinter

We looked at several Class A motorhomes in the 30-to-34-foot range. They seemed huge and complicated. Lots of systems to keep track of, and plenty of things to go wrong.  We particularly liked the discontinued Winnebago Brave tribute models built from 2015 to 2017, but we couldn’t find any for sale. 

 

A Classic Brought Back 

As we searched, we kept going back to the C-class RVs. Built on heavy-duty Ford and Chevy truck chassis, the look and feel of the vehicle seemed a bit more familiar to me. I had driven medium-duty trucks for years before I married and started a family, and these made me feel right at home. Construction was straightforward: a big camper box bolted to a proven truck chassis. It was simple and that appealed to both of us.

 

We focused on finding a lightly used class C in the under-30-foot range. We found a current year Freelander 27QB for sale at a Camping World not too far from our home. It was on the Chevy 4500 chassis and had 4,450 miles on the odometer. I could not figure out why anyone would buy a brand-new RV; drive it three or four thousand miles, and then get rid of it. But I was OK with their decision, and as long we could make a deal, we were good to go.

Our 2018 Coachmen Freelander 27QB

One thing I learned about RV dealers, in general, is this: they have no idea of what they are doing when it comes to taking in trades. We had a one-year-old travel trailer and a one-year-old pickup truck. They had a used current year RV. We established a budget that would allow us to comfortably move from our truck/trailer combo into a class C RV. We would simply hand them our two titles and write a check for the trading difference. 

Dazed and Confused

This idea utterly confused the salesperson and the manager of the dealership. We were finally able to get them on board by telling them we want to know “…our two vehicles and HOW MUCH? to drive off in the Freelander.”  We started with an offer from the dealer that was about $20,000 more than we were willing to pay. After much back-and-forth and many phone calls to Ford dealers (about the pickup), they met our budgeted price and we drove away in our class C. 

 

The Freelander had two drawbacks. The first was that it did not have a slide-out. We thought this was a good idea at the time because we had heard some horror stories about slide-outs that refused to slide back in. Like we said in a previous post: we didn't know what we didn't know. The second drawback was the Chevy chassis and drivetrain. It was a V8 of considerable size and seemed to have no problem moving the RV forward. But as we would soon learn, there is a reason why people prefer the Ford product over the Chevy. 

Our trip home was uneventful. Bari even took it for a spin down a country road near our home, and she had no trouble driving the ‘big rig’. We made plans for our next big camping adventure in our almost-new Coachmen Freelander Class C motorhome.

It was about that time when the weird stuff began to happen and we determined our new RV was haunted.