Howdy,
Gary RV_Wizard said:
I don't know of any C's or even a B+ that is under 8 feet wide, though. The whole reason for building a special coach body to replace the van body is to get a wider coach body. If you want under 8 ft, you need to stick with a Class B like a Roadtrek or Coachhouse
I realize that's not relevant to the OP as he's certainly inquiring about the US market, but in Europe it's very common to find Class C MHs narrower than 8'; in fact (due to the narrower streets in many cities and ditto campsites, I would say) it was the wider-than-8' that were rare to find. Just for an example, when we were there in 2011 we rented something very similar to this: http://www.dethleffs.co.uk/motorhomes/trend/model/a-5887/ (233cm is 7.64?).
I would have guessed that the main reason for the custom body in Class C's there was the cabover bed (which they call an "alcove"), having the main bed out-of-the way in that otherwise "dead" space made a lot of sense in the 20+ days we camped with it.
but the Ford E350 and E450 chassis won't get anywhere near the mpg of the Sprinter.
What have you heard about the Sprinter chassis? Diesels generally do have higher maintenance costs than gas engines, but its probably not a huge difference in that size rig.
No experience with their Sprinters, but other vehicles from MB suffer (at least here in Brazil) from outrageously expensive prices for their parts, which can cost many times the price of the same parts for equivalent vehicles (I vividly remember 5x prices for brake pads, and 30x, yes thirty times, the price for just the glass of a broken lateral mirror, when I had the misfortune of owning their "budget" A160 passenger car circa 2005. I sold it fast afterwards).
But even if that's the case with their Sprinter, perhaps it can all be compensated by higher MPGs as Gary mentioned (it certainly wasn't the case of their passenger car).
Gary, can you please share numbers about their relative MPGs?
Cheers,
--
Vall.
