just looked at Fish's lovely red FF pulling his white caravan and the question begs me is why are they always white...
surely caravans painted in basic colours like red,blue etc would be more agreeable to the peeps that are stuck following them on single track roads [ ].. ... - .- -.




Y. O. L. O.
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Ours used to be white but being 10 years old now is a nice shade of cream!

Our friends have just brought a new Swift Conqueror and the side panels are grey. Its not that far from stornaway grey either so as an outfit on the move would look pretty smart if the fatty was grey too.

I thought there was going to be a trend towards all new vans being grey sided but it seems manuf are moving back to white again for 2015/2016in a lot of cases.

It would only take one manf to move to another base colour and they all would - they are like sheep. But then again 80% of the new vans sold are all made by one company albeit in the guise of either Swift, Sterling, etc etc. 405 AB exec seats Baltic and Cirrus
93 RR Classic efi

Remember it's easier to get forgiveness than permission!

Gone in order:
4.4 TDV8 SE - gone to a good home
93 Classic hard dash Plymouth Blue
03 L322 Oslo Blue
2000 Disco TD5 ES Epsom Green
98 P38 Rioja Red
89 Classic Cairngorm Brown

Airstreams are Silver / Chrome aren't they?

Production costs Stan? Maybe? That said though, i have some pals in the cladding trade (i presume the same material as caravans are made of?) & i think all Ral colours are similarly priced.

That said, i guess they would need to buy, produce & sell "X” amount of each colour to make it work

are they not made from glass fibre? .. if so it cant be that hard to put in a bit of blue or red in the mix..

like ajac8 says they all seem to be like sheep which coincidently are 'white' [well, the majority of them]

this could be a good market for the wrapping companies to get into.. ... - .- -.




Y. O. L. O.
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Yep, you're on the money there Craig. Just looking at how many caravan makers have gone to the wall over costs, good vans too like Fleetwood, Vanmaster, Vanroyce, Eterniti, but sadly they were too small and niche as manufacturers and the price reflected this. The amount of units sold each year makes a robotic assembly line way too expensive so they are all very much hand assembled.

Even now there are only really 2 mainstream companies, the Swift Group and the Explore group with a couple of single name smaller makers like Coachman and Bailey. It's all about cost and it's way cheaper to make all the panels in one colour that it is to have to make them in a range. Especially so when you look at newer construction methods such as Alu-Tech or SOLiD.

This is why when some dealers have their own ranges they have to commit to order hundreds of units over the season to make it viable for the maker to accommodate them.

stan wrote:

are they not made from glass fibre?

Not really Stan. Back panels usually are in traditional construction abd some front panels as well. All sides tend to be aluminium skinned panels.

GRP panels was also the main reason Avondale went to the wall with all the warranty claims it generated.

thank you my learned friend, i thought different....  ... - .- -.




Y. O. L. O.
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stan wrote:

are they not made from glass fibre? .. ................................................

I believe they are made of a very similar (if not exactly the same) materiel as they clad modern buildings with Stan... Kingspan & alike

googling comes up with caravans being constructed of GRP and/or aluminium, depending on the manufacturer...


anyway they look a right mess when crashed ...... ... - .- -.




Y. O. L. O.
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Would have thought GRP would be “old technology” Stan... Probably upto the 70’s/80’s

Things like nosecones are till composites i think pal...

Very small softwood timber frames clad with thin alli and insulated with Kingspan like foam. All the strength of a cereal box when taken as one component. When all nailed together it gets structural strength from the combined sum of the component parts which is why they turn to matchwood when crashed.

But they are an amazing balance of strength against weight though. A Lunar (renowned for being light) twin axle 26 foot caravan weighs in at about 1500 KG which when you start with a 700 KG chassis is some feat of engineering really. All that bodywork and inside fit out coming in at 800 kilos takes some doing. Even our Coachman, well known for being heavy due to lack of compromise on build quality is only 1700 kilos when it leaves the factory.

stan wrote:

this could be a good market for the wrapping companies to get into..

Wrapping one of those big vans i guess would be £4k upwards Would it be worth doing???

Plenty of people seem to be happy to spend even more on things that I wouldn't consider worth doing