It's official...we are crazy for campervans
Comments
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Oh yes they are !!
Motor Caravan is technically a body type for a vehicle and it is so designated on the V5 (Registration Certificate of the vehicle).
That designation has various legal consequences including affecting the speed limit (depending on the Taxation Class). The vehicle must have certain characteristics before it can "qualify as a motor caravan.
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To help my understanding did the various sources of the data collated to produce the figures of "30,000" and "225,000" use a uniform definition of "Campervan" ? What was it ?
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Who cares!
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Apparently not you since your remark is not posed as a question.
But I do andt there may be others.
There are lies dammed lies and statistics according to
Benjamin Disraeli and/or Mark Twain.
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Pretty meaningless flier from CC. I should not be surprised as it is in line with their hype of late.
Meaningless for many reasons. Some of the stuff appears to be based on a survey for which we have no idea how many respondents there were in order to have any idea of its merit.
Campervanners love
their vehicles enough
to give them names
Nearly 10% name after
someone who has
helped with their
purchase or a loved oneIs that 10% of maybe 1% that give there LV a name? Is that more than 2 people? What percentage of campervanners actually name their vehicle?
Around
225,000
motorhomes and
campervans in use
in the UK
Around 90,000
of these are
Volkswagen campervans
of all agesI find it very hard to believe that 40% of all motorhomes/campers are Volkswagen campervans in use based on the evidence of my own experience and recollection.
50% of new members of the
Caravan and Motorhome
Club are motorhomersThat is perhaps more believable but what percentage are campervanners?
Including around
30,000 campervanners
I have no idea how many new members the Club has had in last 12 months. The 2017 GM gave a figure of 357,000 new members for that year. Based on those figures it suggests that 1 in 12 new members are Campervanners.
100,000th iconic California campervan
produced at Volkswagen’s
Hanover factory in May 2018Is that in 30 years since 1988 when Westfalia were manufacturing them? How many were produced in the last 12 months for the UK market?
50% increase in worldwide
Volkswagen
campervan sales
in 2017Is this a great general increase or does it reflect that following the emissions scandal starting in September 2015 that the 2016 sales figures were disastrous and maybe particularly in the US one suspects? A 50% increase in worldwide sales is meaningless to CC. What is more to the point is how many new VW campervans were actually sold in UK during year ending 2017.
I could go on. Is VW Campers paying well for this advertisement? Our local gardener produces an equally informative flier for his business services.
BoleroBoy suggests that campervanners, are like himself in non needing all singing and dancing facility sites. From what I have seen such outfits tend to have no washroom and little in the way of WC comforts and their users seem to require use of a site facility more than other groups.
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Easy has mirrored one of my thoughts in that this sounds like a VW promotion.
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In the self built motorhome community, any and all coachbuilt motorhomes are widely termed as being "flimsies".
Personally speaking, I always believe the small VW type vans in which you can sleep and do the basics of living are campervans, whereas the widely produced panel van conversions are of course far larger and normally with far more comprehensive levels of equipment which is why a lot of people term them as being motorhomes.
I was a "tugger" (another self built expression for a caravanner) for something like 30 years before I took the plunge and made my own van, it being a LWB Renault Master and it is most definitely a motorhome as it is totally full serviced yet it can drive where so many "flimsies" can't.
I thought the survey was very interesting.
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Alan, I wonder why the survey was commissioned when all they needed to do was drop you a line....
im afraid you got my 'suggestion' wrong....
ive advocated an extra type of fast turnaround facility (pitch) for those (very many, it seems) users who are spontaneous and come and go at a different rate to you and others.
yes, some vans don't have washrooms, but the club provides these, even for those who might be on a max stay pitch.
as I outlined in another post, different groups on different types of pitches can still share some of the facilities without folk getting upset about it.
if the vans are happy to be without EHU (and even the smallest campers have batteries and gas) why should they not take advantage of a service like that?
all the articles I've read point to a big surge in smaller MH sales, many of them campervans as in this thread...
if the club is truly a Motorhome and Caravan club, and it's happy to post threads like this recognising the changing sales profiles, then surely it is doing more with the numbers than just posting them here for interest.
if they aren't considering the impact on their business I'd be surprised
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Personally I see the Campervan Infographic as an advert geared towards encouraging campervan owners (VW’s especially) to join our club which will probably appear in various magazines produced by Warner Group Publications.
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Alan, I wonder why the survey was commissioned when all they needed to do was drop you a line...
If the had dropped me a line BB I would have told them to undertake a meaningful survey. The information published here is pretty minimal in meat and the information on the flyer/info graphic is partly carefully selected 'soundbites' and carefully selected information from VWC without proper context. A bit like many modern car adverts really.
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ET, don’t know if any of this helps or not but in Feb 2012 the Caravan Club had 376,890 members a reduction of 2.5% on the previous year. Last year the clubs membership was 352,635.
At the same time Practical Caravan had a circulation of 33,273 down 13.8% now at 21,424 and falling over 6%
Practical Motorhome circulation 14,126 down 11% now at 12,621 and falling at over 4%.
Ken
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It does Ken. I realise that I misread the minutes of the 2017 GM which quoted a total of 351,120 members I have no idea how many of those were 'new' but it casts serious doubt in my mind about the validity of the flyer indicating that 30,000 of the new members were campervanners when I would doubt that there had been 60,000 new members based on the claim that 50% of the new members were campervanners
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Both the Fiat 500 and that four wheel drive Discovery are cars! Yes they are but both have different capabilities and uses. So it is in my opinion that a campervan and a motorhome, and all those permutations in between, are all motorised caravans. The point is we buy what we hope will serve our purposes best. In my experience of owning several, there is alway a tad of compromise to be made when making our choice which make and model to purchase. As I've always said, we are all caravaners, motorised or otherwise. Let harmony reign.
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Both the Fiat 500 and that four wheel drive Discovery are cars! Yes they are but both have different capabilities . . . we buy what we hope will serve our purposes best.
I bought the Discovery.
Technically not a car but a "dual purpose vehicle" in that it converts to a "van" as do "estate cars".
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Could it be that this whole exercise is designed to appeal to younger people and attract them to the club?
It appears to be a VW promotion as well but, to be fair, it’s the VW which appeals to younger people and is probably the base vehicle most folk think of in terms of a campervan. Maybe the club is a little smarter than we're giving them credit for.
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I would have thought that as these campervans have minimal or no facilities then club sites are the perfect match? If they don't want such facilities then CLs are there too, and often they have more vacancies, (especially those with less facilities ) and open to more spontaneous touring.
PS other full fat sites non club sites are available
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I would have thought that as these campervans have minimal or no facilities then club sites are the perfect match?
We would appear to be wrong. According to BB, who seems to know about such things, they will find CC sites provide too much as he and they flit from site to site as free as birds with no need for EHU.
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I am glad you agree that both types legal definition is Motor Caravan and the name "Campervan" as this thread is about (according to the OP)and Motorhomes are both made up names by yet again some "blue sky thinking?" by marketing departments,to "upgrade?" the product
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Maybe I misunderstood BB; he was advocating an extra type of fast turnaround facility (pitch) for those (very many, it seems) users who are spontaneous and come and go at a different rate others. I admit to not fully understanding why they can't come today and go tomorrow on the present set up. Maybe BB wants them to be able to arrive after 8pm and go before 9am?
Maybe they want to get a pitch without booking. It has been suggested before by some members that some pitches should not be bookable but should be left for the free spirits less there spontaneity backfires.
There was a suggestion thread and I believe that t was suggested there that it was suggested that the CC should consider giving a discount to members who did not advance book.
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ET/JVB I do not want EHU or showers all the while but on most club sites I get them. I do not need a huge pitch for an overnight stay but on a club site I get one, you are right you do not always get what you want yo get what you don't want.
ET without opening the same old debate I think BB has covered most in his posts above!!
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I absolutely agree that this topic has been done to death, MT, and I’m only going to make it clear that you do not speak for all MH-ers.
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and what one actually needs