New to campers and surprised by the high prices. How come a camper is half the cost of a car?

The technologies the testing and all the associated costs that a car manufacturer pays to deliver a car to the market are much higher than the similar costs for a manufacturer to deliver a camper to the market. Why are the prices so high ? How is it possible that a car could be around 40K and a camper is ...20K ??
 

Rbertalotto

Explorer
The only saving grace with campers, is they depreciate rapidly. And folks buy what they don’t like and sell relatively unused campers for 25-50% off new price. I was looking at truck campers. From $20k+ to over $50,000! I can’t see how a box with a few accoutrements can ring up this kind of price....
 

tacollie

Glamper
Small production numbers. Good labor isn't cheap. If you think $20k is a lot then build it yourself. Anything I've looked at used under $10k had been a pile of crap and that was before covid screwed the market.

If you then truck campers are expensive you should look at the companies building out vans.
 

Herbie

Rendezvous Conspirator
I was going to say. Any camper that would functionally replace my current one would be at least as much as a luxury automobile - the kind of thing that comes with Nürburgring times...
 
Even the relatively cheaper wedge campers are going up in price. Two years ago it wasn't hard to find one under $10k. Now even if you can the wait time is a couple YEARS!

I agree with the above comments regarding scale and labor. It's not really fair to compare them to automobiles.
 
I was looking at the flatbeds 10K for one ? Seriously ? What is the extremely good work that is required for these?
As far as I could see these are pretty well a very good match for mass production
 

roving1

Well-known member
Even just a cargo trailer with nothing inside of it costs an astronomical amount brand new/used.

It's absurd to cross price empty boxes on wheels vs actual whole entire cars that can drive you to the ends of the earth and they are often the same price.
 
As I said for flat beds it does not check the economy of scale theory
These could be easily mass produced using CNCs and welding. It is far less work intensive
 

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