Monday, April 18, 2016

How we ended up at a Grand Design Factory Tour, Elkhart, Indiana

We arrived at the Grand Design factory for our tour and were very happy with what we saw there. We were not allowed to take photos inside the factory so I have no pictures to show you but I will tell you the back story as to how we got here.

We loved the layout of our Surveyor but we have had so many issues with it and the company has not stood behind their build. Currently after 5 years of owner ship we have a list of 32 warranty items that were never fixed. Most of that we fault the dealer where we purchased it from, but still???
Soon to say good bye to our Surveyor and Hello to our 367BHS
Do you remember way back when in Feb when we went to the Fulltime Family Rally in Tampa? Well while we were at the Rally they had a tour of homes where everyone can sign up their rigs and do tours for other fulltime families to come and see your homes.

Well we went on this tour and we fell in love with the layout of one of the homes we saw, the Sanibel 38QB.

We decided to go to Lazy Days RV lot (since we were at their campground) and took a look at other RV's. While here I liked the Grand Design 357 BHS but since it was a company we didn't know anything about, we didn't pay much attention to it.

We came back a different day and asked for someone to show us around. This time he showed us quite a few bunk room layouts and we ended up at the 357BHS. We decided based on the quality of this rig that we wanted a bit more information this time, on the company.

We went and sat down with the dealer and he handed us a brochure and on it was listed a 367BHS which was basically the same layout at the 38QB that we loved! As a bonus the quality of the Grand Design was better too, in our opinion.

Since we are from Canada and we can't finance it,  we started calling around Canadian dealers. We were offered a supper deal on a similar layout to the Sanibel. It was a Heartland 39MBHS. We went to a dealer in Florida to have a look at it so we would know if we liked it or not and the quality of the build was more in par with what we have in our Surveyor and it's craftmanship was not the greatest. The deal was so good we really wanted to like it, but we had to walk away from it.

When we told the Ontario dealer that we didn't like the Heartland and we had decided that we wanted a Grand Design, the dealer did some of his own research and hoped to call us back and tell us why we shouldn't buy a Grand Design. Instead he told us he could not find one thing bad to tell us. That he believed we would be very happy with a Grand Design product. 

After hours and hours, and days and days of our own research, that cemented it for us. We found a Grand Design dealer in Ontario and ordered the 367BHS without ever stepping foot in one. We knew we liked the layout from the Sanibel. We knew we liked the quality of the Grand Design from seeing the 357BHS, so we went ahead and orderd a 367BHS sight unseen.


Touring the factory we hoped to see one on the assembly line but that line had just finished last week and we just missed our actual rig on the line by a few days. This morning as we were driving to our tour, our rig arrived at the Ontario dealer and will be ready for pick up on the 20th!!! so excited!!!


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