One of the growing trends in American recreational vehicles today is the rise of the European-style coach. Americans are voting with their voices and their wallets that they want smaller, easier to drive RVs. Those people now have surprisingly good choice in the market with even large players entering into this niche. One of those brands is RV giant Coachmen, and its new Euro motorhome tries to be the best of both worlds. It’s smaller, narrower, and more aerodynamic like a European RV, but has the platform, luxuries, and power of an American RV. It’s being marketed as a “crossover” and like the crossover SUV it’s a great idea, only the RV version of it has quite a problem.
I wrote about the Coachmen Euro last month, but that article hinged largely on what my eyes could see through press photos. The great thing about RV shows is that I can get on the ground and dig around the RVs that I write about. Then, I can see if they live up to the promise of their marketing copy. To be clear, I never want to bash a company or its products. I deliver to you what my eyes see and what my hands feel. RVs are the second largest (if not the largest) purchase you can make. I want to help people make informed decisions and maybe there’s the off-chance that a manufacturer might make a positive change. Or at least that’s what a woman can hope.
In the car world, the crossover is a vehicle that combines traits of a car with traits of an SUV. Usually, this means you get a big vehicle that looks like an SUV and rides high like one, too, but based on a car platform so it drives more like a big wagon rather than a truck.
Europe Meets America
The Coachmen Euro, which launched last year, is pitched as more or less the crossover of motorhomes. But that has a different meaning here. American motorhomes are big on power, luxury, and sheer size while European units are smaller, sleeker, more aerodynamic, and lighter. In theory, if you combined the two together you’d get the kind of RV people have been asking for lately.
The Coachmen Euro is substantially smaller than many Class A coaches. Here’s what I said last month:
The highlight of the Coachmen Euro is its body. It measures just 28’4″ long, 11’1″ tall, and 99″ wide. When loaded up, it weighs a maximum of just 16,000 pounds. There are a few states where drivers of RVs have to have a driver’s license in the proper weight class. One of them is my home state of Illinois. The driver of a Coachmen Euro doesn’t need to get a higher-weight endorsement.
This is a sharp contrast to even Coachmen’s other motorhomes (below), which get as long as 41’1″, as tall as 12’10”, as wide as 102″, and as heavy as 32,000 pounds. As I said earlier, motorhomes by other brands get even longer and even heavier than that.
But this coach isn’t just smaller. Coachmen decided to copy the aerodynamic style of European motorhomes. I continue:
The coach features an aerodynamic body featuring Noble Select composite outer sheeting, Azdel composite inner wall, a laminated fiberglass roof, and fiberglass end caps. All of it is covered in automotive paint with a clear coat. You’ll note that the roof doesn’t even have an air-conditioner on it. I love RV roofs with as few holes as possible in them because that’s one less place you have to worry about water intrusion.
Coachmen also says that the base floor structure is steel and the underbody of the coach features galvanized steel panels. Coachmen says that’s good for aero, but also keeps out critters better than plastic belly panels when the coach is being stored. It looks like some wood is present in the form of the floor on top of the metal, but there’s a welcoming lack of wood in the overall construction.
When I saw the Euro in person, I was happy to see that most of this was present and of pretty good quality. The Euro is painted in a fantastic glossy finish that I wish more coaches came in. I also loved the metal underbody and the removal of equipment from the roof that would have one day potentially provided an entry point for water.
However, the exterior was also where I first started noticing some sloppy work. For example, take a look at this passenger window, which is made by RV supplier Lippert.
The window sits a handful of millimeters off the body. When the sun shines on it, you notice that the frit (the black border), sometimes doesn’t actually terminate at the end of the glass. If you look at it from 10 feet away or so it looks like a seal was applied poorly or something.
I noticed that this issue was present on the other Coachmen Euro at the show. I’m sure this won’t be a problem in the long run, but if I noticed it, I’m sure you would too. Thankfully, I think you could fix it with a little bit of black paint from AutoZone.
The first real problem occurred when I attempted to enter the white coach. I opened the door and annoyingly, the screen door stayed behind. No matter what I did I couldn’t convince the screen door to move with the main door like every other modern RV on the planet. This gets extra annoying because the coach’s motorized steps don’t deploy unless both the screen door and the main door are open.
The screen door was so consistently stuck shut that I found it hard to believe nobody did anything about it before displaying the unit at an RV show. To be sure, I checked out the black unit and it didn’t have this problem, so something was wrong with the door on the white unit.
Something I found neat on both units was their manufacturing plates. The chassis of the white one was finished in January 2024, but it wasn’t completed into a motorhome until late November.
Once I did get inside, I was amused at what Coachmen did. So, the whole idea with this interior layout is that it’s like a European motorhome. What this means in practice is that the interior has the same layout as a camper van, but scaled up by 50 percent.
Coachmen says that one of the other European traits of the Euro is its use of mirrors mounted to its roof rather than mirrors mounted just below the window line. The brand says that putting the mirror bases above your line of sight improves visibility over the “transit-style” mirrors and I agree. However, this isn’t a feature unique to the Coachmen Euro. I found other Class As at the RV show with the same kind of roof-mounted mirrors. Still, it’s a neat touch.
Moving back from the cab I noticed my next big issue with the Euro. Where the heck do you even eat in this thing? There’s a dashboard-based tray for the front passenger and the kitchen counter. That’s it. This is supposed to be a family coach but where is the family supposed to eat? I guess Coachmen expects them to sit at that sofa with their meal. There aren’t even cupholders where the sofa is.
I asked some Class A owners in case I was missing something and they did a double-take when they realized the same thing I did.
That aside, the kitchen does look pretty neat, featuring a gently flowing design with curves. In Coachmen’s press copy it mentioned that the company outsources the Euro’s cabinets to a third-party cabinetmaker to ensure consistent quality. On one hand, the cabinetry did seem to be a cut above the normal stuff that comes out of Indiana. On the other hand, the cabinetry still had ugly cosmetic flaws.
Here’s more just weird cosmetic damage on a cheap piece of floor trim. Remember, all of the stuff I’m showing you is on an RV that left the factory a little over a month ago.
To further clarify, this is also not an RV show unit, but a unit provided by a dealership and intended for sale to a customer. The pictures I took were from before the public was unleashed into the show.
Moving to the bathroom, I am pleased to report that while it isn’t huge, it is larger than you’d find in many small rigs. I feel like I could use the shower with some comfort, which I can’t say about most RVs.
Finally, we reach the rear, where you step up into a weird lounge sort of thing that fully converts into a king bed. I have no real notes about the rear end of the coach. It’s plenty big enough for a couple and small kids to sleep in with room to spread out. Or maybe the kids can take the sofa, which also transforms into a bed.
Once I got my fill of the white unit, I moved to the black unit. This was largely the same as the white one, but this one comes with a slide. It does add some floorspace, but not really enough that I’d want to spend extra to get the slide. Weirdly, the sofa is now gone and in its place is look, a table! The table is still too small, but at least the option is there.
Apparently, there’s another floorplan out there that offers seats and belts for six people, but a table for just two of those people. Am I missing something here?
I walked out of both of the motorhomes a bit disappointed. I love the idea of blending the size of a European coach with the power and luxury of an American motorhome.
You get a Ford F53 motorhome chassis with power from the Godzilla 7.3-liter gasoline V8, which makes 335 HP and 468 lb-ft of torque. You’ll have no problem finding parts compared to if this were a real European motorhome with some engine no small-town shop’s ever heard of. The Ford F53 is also able to be sold in the states where many large diesels cannot be sold. Oh yeah, and did I mention that when loaded at its heaviest the Euro is just 16,000 pounds?
Unfortunately, it seems as though Coachmen didn’t copy European quality, instead leaving that very American. The interiors of the brand-new Coachmen Euros at the 2025 Florida RV SuperShow had what I felt were too many imperfections for month-old rigs. I also felt that the interior materials didn’t match what Coachmen was trying to go for here. Sure, none of my complaints impact the coach’s day-to-day operations, but I’d be properly annoyed if the screen door failed to open every single time I tried opening the main door.
So, I love this idea, but wish it had better execution. The Coachmen Euro can be had for roughly $140,000, but that price is highly dependent on options, location, and the dealer selling it to you. Personally, if I were dropping more than the value of a decent first-generation Audi R8 V10 on a rig, I’d want the materials to be at least a bit better.
That all being said, I still like the concept. This is the low-riding, smaller, and lighter motorhome that people have been asking for. Plus it’s backed by reliable Ford power. Now, Coachmen just needs to import the fit and finish of a European coach.
I’m not sure I personally would pick too much at the fit-and-finish of what still is a glorified bus, I’d be more worried about things like massive delamination, leaks, soft spots and mechanical/electric issues ten- or twenty years away. However, only a factory tour by an engineer familiar with everything involved could begin to shed light on what to expect.
However this cursory glance is certainly educational. The interiors shown are, for me, as cold and soul-less as the inside of a refrigerator. The table deal is absurd, the many wonderful evenings spent with my wife and/or kids in RVs poring over maps, drawings and thousand-piece picture puzzles while the ocean waves crashed outside, or the rain fell, means there needs to be a big enough table and comfy seating for everyone…it comes right after bathroom, bed and cooking facilities.
For just making miles and skipping hotels (and I HATE hotels) I can see these working OK.
Other than the shape in the front, this does not seem that much different to me than any other RV. I mean no slides so it weighs less, but again, for that money, I’m getting slides.
This stuff has all gotten too expensive. And as you note, with the build quality, it’s disappointing.
You should have a hashtag for trailers under $40K because that’s a realistic price tag for a lot of us. Tell us about good deals for roomy, interesting trailers in that price point, that are not complete junk, at least once in a while. And another hashtag for trailers for families with kids. I need a bunkhouse option for anything I will buy at this point.
They make these things called “folding chairs” that you can sit on and move around to suit the situation, but they fold up for storage, take hardly any space, and they weigh about as much as an electric guitar. Maybe half as much as a Gibson.
The ‘narrower’ not-as-massive RVs have been around for a little while now and my parents actually purchased one a couple of years ago. The main reason? Due to it’s slightly narrower body, my dad can fit it between the fence and the house (barely) in a relatively tight neighborhood. The build quality aint great though it seems pretty standard for the RVs/Motorhomes they’ve had in the past. What’s interesting is that it has the same powertrain as the full size a-class so he barely notices when he’s towing his Maverick Lariat with it.
I was skeptical of the build quality as soon as I saw it was a Coachman.
Never mind just eating. I’ve been camping when the skies open up, and we’d sit inside at the table and play cards. Even with their apparently optional table, this doesn’t look like a good place for more than 2 people to sit facing each other.
Wait; where’s the TV? Presumably in the lounge/bed area, but my first thought upon seeing the couch across from the kitchen area was, ‘That’s not gonna work in America cause there’s no place for a TV!’
Growing up my family did a lot of trips in either a 1974 Ford F350 4×4 with a 8′ camper in the bed, or later in a 1970 something 24′ Winnie that required half a can of starting fluid sprayed in the Mopar’s carb to start.
I can barely remember ever using the table for anything other than a bed, except when underway. Mostly because there was always either a folding camp table brought with, or a picnic table at the camp site already.
For the growing number of childless American couples that want something nicer than an overlanding rig, but greener than a normal motorhome, this seems to fit the bill well.
Nothing in the interior reminds me of the RV’s we have here in Europe. Starting with the layout as you mention, where do you seat and eat? The two big chairs are hideous, in Europe you would find a proper table with two benches suited for four, or you will have the possibility to rotate the two front cabin-seats 180 degress towards the dinnertable. Also weight-wise this is still much, much heavier than the majority of Europe style RV’s. Normal driving license limits you to max. 3500 kg (~7700 pounds) so a lot of the RV’s are trimmed down to get within this limit. The bigger RV’s here go over, but stay well within 5000 kg (~11000 pounds).
I never understood how some RVs and campers, usually the smaller ones, will replace the dinette with a sofa. I’ve been looking through the used listing for a while trying to decide what I want and this layout is fairly common and it always confuses me. Why no table? Is it just for watching TV? Do you go camping and just watch TV the whole time? Some of the sofas will have the fold out wing tables but that’s not really the same in my eyes.
I kind of picture it as the old boomer layout, both siting on their side of the sofa (usually recliners) and watching the news and complaining about how millennials are ruining everything.
What I love about RVs is that no matter how horrible/childish my car choices are, I at least didn’t pay $140K (or more) for a shoddily built RV that I’ll barely ever use and depreciates even faster than a luxury sedan.
RVs existing makes owning a BMW or Porsche seem quite sensible.
You buy travel trailers for the value proposition (well, at least the ones that are normal)–I have a small trailer, with a couple kids, I worked it out for my family that about 3+ weeks of use a year I was saving over a hotel and food costs even with a year’s worth of payments, storage, insurance, and towing.
You buy RVs for reasons other than logic in most cases, at least new ones.
I get residual value and all, but 140k = 460 nights in a $300pn hotel, and you don’t need to work out where to store the hotel for 50 weeks a year…
This is the math we did as well. Ended up with a crappy old camper that we have maybe $5,000 invested. It has paid for itself many times over, in large part to it being crappy. I will back it into trees through bushes you name it, because I am not worried about breaking it. If I had something like this I would be terrified to go anywhere other than a KOA.
Other benefits of old campers:
Yep and based on visiting newer campers I think the old ones are made better. Ours had some water damage and in repairing it the structure is much more robust than newer campers.
I can’t park one in my driveway so even if I got the damn thing for free I’d be into it $250-300/mo for storage ’round these parts. That will cover me for a normal years worth of hotel stays. I sorta like the idea, but every time I go down the rabbit hole I come back to how much I’d have to drop for the privilege of sleeping in a dry rotting box on a bed I’d have to make every morning…
“You’ll have no problem finding parts compared to if this were a real European motorhome with some engine no small-town shop’s ever heard of.”
What is this the 1970s?
In 2025 and especially for something that costs six figures I expect a drive train that needs absolutely nothing but fluids, tires and MAYBE plugs for at least 200k/20 years. If I can (almost) get that out of a $20k fancy DOHC 4V VTEC Honda sewing machine I damn well better get it out of the blunt rock that is an American push rod 2V V8.
Oh yes I agree. I was complimenting the choice of a reliable V8.
In the past, RV companies doing the whole Euro thing just imported European market vehicles. A good example was the Winnebago LeSharo, which was a Renault Trafic underneath. The weird motorhome and its weird drivetrain had some issues here and there.
Many small shops still won’t work on my Smarts because they’re too “exotic.” I can’t imagine what it must have been like for a LeSharo owner a few decades ago. “You have a Le-what??”
So yeah, a good ol’ American V8 is a great choice! 🙂
Once again, I click on the article thinking “wow…that might be a cool option”, and leave thinking “the 20k I dropped on my used (and now well loved) COVID trailer was money well spent. There is just not a compelling reason to “upgrade”, and as someone noted in the Wingamm review, it’s awfully nice to have a 4×4 truck to go explore in once I’ve found a suitable off-grid campsite.
Ditto to this. We got a great deal on ours in 2019 just before the insanity of COVID hit the market. It isn’t a base model and has held up well (knock on wood). While it still doesn’t make financial sense entirely when I factor in insurance, maintenance, site fees, gas, and the same items on the tow vehicle it is still far more sensible than pretty much all these RVs.
It will be interesting to see what these are going for in 10+ years though, maybe almost into the “well, maybe” realm.
“The Coachmen Euro can be had for roughly $140,000”
That’s fourteen $10,000 10-day cruise vacations for two (in a suite)
Or 28 $5000 10 day cruise vacations for two (in a balcony cabin)
(Count airfare, hotels and other travel expenses as roughly offsetting fuel, insurance, maintenance and RV park fees. Souvenirs and spa treatments extra)
Nei to the Coachman.
Another Norwegian Fjords Cruise? Ja Takk!
Ha ha! You are not tricking me into a cruise even with that logic, even by adding “Norwegian fjords”.
Sure – but your ship’s suite will be roughly the same size as the interior of this RV – plus your balcony.
Or your balcony cabin will be smaller -but the space including the balcony will be about the same size….
….and you never have to buy food, cook, clean, drive, deal with sewerage…
Yes but the dining room will be much larger.
…tho no cupholders there either.
I guess you’ll have to use a table.
*facepalm*
You aren’t pining for the fjords?
Or just fly to Norway, and rent an RV here. You can visit all the fjords, and stay for as long as you want. Win-win.
When anyone mentions European motorhomes I can only think of, then lament, the Vixen.
If they just copied that interior and put it in this, almost all of the complaints would be addressed.
My folks got into RVs when I was in high school back in the ’80s. Every unit they bought was a *steaming* pile of poo. Constant issues with every one of them from new. And they never cheaped out, they went from mid-range to the final one being an Airstream that was both $pendy and constantly broken. If the quality of these things has dropped considerably since the “good old days” that is frankly terrifying.
I think I mentioned this before, but the first one they bought was a giant slide-in with a GMC diesel “Camper Special” pickup under it. The mighty n/a 6.2. The ONE time I ever drove the thing, the Old Man was directing me where to park it in the yard and directed me to back it into one of the 2’+ upright railroad ties that served to mark the yard corners for snow plowing purposes. Ripped the poop tank right out of the bottom of the thing, spewing gallons of epic foulness across the yard. And he could not say a THING about it, because HE was telling me exactly what to do. LOL. Never drove it again, nor did I ever have to go with them, thank Dog! Sadly, despite being home alone pretty much every weekend all summer, I never took any advantage of that situation – I was a boring kid.
My father in law had a 94 Winnabago Warrior and I hated driving that thing. The last time I had to drive it, he was directing me to back into his house, yelling and waving his hands. He didn’t see the curb and directed me to rip the poop chute right out dumping gallons of hell into the front yard. Like your situation, he couldn’t say a word since he told me exactly what to do. I never drove that monster again.
ROFL – nice to know I was not alone in this!
My folks started using their weekend place after I left for college – but to this day I still run into people a bit younger than me that say “your brother had great parties…” I spent the first two years of engineering school drinking too much and quit drinking the summer after my second year – so I can commiserate with you boring-ness.
I literally never drank a drop until I turned 21, and I still drink an amount that rounds to “I don’t drink”. I did manage to flunk out of my first college without drinking though – going to a school in the mountains and discovering that student lift passes are cheap and that you REALLY like to go skiing will do that.
But I have a kid brother like yours. And he was a violent drunk. He gave up drinking and became a world-class pothead after a few too many stints in the clink for drunken brawling. He was, is, and will always be, a complete and utter dumbass.
Sixteen thousand pound “Euro” RV with Godzilla V8. (Side note: better than a diesel engine for this application IMO)
Flashbacks to Chevrolet Celebrity “Eurosport” with column shift automatic transmission, pushrod V6, and flaccid comfort-oriented suspension.
Same indifferent assembly, I suppose.
About as ‘Euro’ as Bud Light.
It should be illegal to put the word Euro on anything powered by a 7.3L gasoline-powered pushrod V8
The Jensen Interceptor and sundry other American V8 powered cars would like a word…
Made by Lippert or any of the other RV manufacturers/suppliers/subcontractors that haunt the Midwest? You can bet your ass that fit, finish, material quality, and assembly details will be absolute garbage.
Sample QC Checklist:
The list of manufacturers and suppliers is pretty short at this point. It’s basically Lippert and Atwood for almost all the components, and THOR and Forest River for the manufacturers. Those pairs are each like >90% of the market for components and finished units respectively. I’m honestly a bit surprised that THOR and FR haven’t acquired either Lippert or Atwood to really drive competition down.
I’ve been to some euro RV shows and even had the chance to tear down a couple of new euro caravans for product research. I don’t believe the average Euro unit is any better built than an American unit in a similar market segment.
RVs from either place offer disappointing fit and finish unless you’re looking at the top of the market.
Sadly this seems to be the state of the RV industry: better-than-normal is still suboptimal.
Are we still putting “Euro” labels on stuff to convey a sense of quality?
I don’t know about everyone else, but that feels both offensive to Europe and condescending to the US.
And I can say that, it’s cool. I have a bunch of European ancestors.
Were your ancestors much sportier before they got here? If you only have old photos to go by, you can tell because their chrome trim would be replaced with black trim.
My ancestors were certainly leaner, if not necessarily sportier.
Though I’m being burdened by heaps of safety and emissions equipment that they weren’t required to carry.
I always thought of the the ‘Euro’ moniker/marketing jive was more to imply a sense of style or sophistication than quality.
Agreed, but I think the point stands. I’ve been to enough places in Europe to safely say that I hope people don’t think the beaches of Rimini or Benidorm are better than Panama City or South Padre. It’s all a charade. (say the last part in French)
As a thought exercise, when we apply the same principles to somewhere like Africa (exotic, wild, remote!) then it’s quickly labeled as racism or at least narrowmindedness.
Wow, I didn’t mean for that to get so serious…
I’ll take the aforementioned R8 V10, and whatever tent I can fit in the frunk
Okay, so if you had to spend your OWN MONEY, would you buy this pseudo-European, or pony up the additional ~$50k to get the much smaller Wingamm you wrote about earlier to get a REAL Euro RV?
It’s hard to say because I’ve never even sniffed this kind of money before. But no, I would not buy this coach because while I like the idea as a concept, it’s not really my kind of jam. I would buy the Wingamm if I happened to have 188k sitting around with nothing more important to spend it on. But it’s hard to imagine ever having that kind of dough!
I think it’s worth noting that if this is a show unit it’s probably seen more traffic through it in a few months than it will in its entire life, and that traffic doesn’t own it and doesn’t have any motivation to take care of it. That doesn’t explain all of the defects, but it might some of them.
The layout problem is more damning to me though. You have to have some place to eat inside for when the weather is bad, or the bugs are bad, or you’ve just had enough nature for the day. I seriously think these floorplans are sometimes designed by people who have never actually camped a single night in their entire life.
This is not a show unit, but a unit just over a month old that was provided by a dealership. I took the pictures during Industry Day before the general public got to take a look. Sadly, I think it was delivered to the dealer like this.
And yeah, the table situation left me puzzled. I spent a good 20 minutes trying to figure out how my family would eat in there and all I’m left with is that one person gets the passenger seat table and the rest of us eat standing.
There is a movement among younger people that eschews dining at a table. I first noticed on Big Bang Theory and then in other fictional and real-world settings.
They just do the sofa thing, or stand. Maybe it’s a by-product of growing up with a “breakfast bar”, or a societal move away from “family dinner”.
I used to do that sort of thing. Just eat while sitting on the couch. But ugh, at least with my couch crumbs got into places I couldn’t clean. So I went back to the table. 🙂
I am by no means “younger” but as a single middle-aged dude, the ONLY time I ever eat at my table is if I have company over. Couch 90% of the time, desk the other 10% (usually working through lunch). But as an old, I know how to eat without making a mess…
I think the solution here is good old-fashioned folding TV tray tables. Stow them when not in use. But I don’t even bother with those. I cut anything that needs cutting into bite-sized bits in the kitchen before taking it to the couch to eat. Usually if I have cooked anything that needs to be eaten in a civilized manner, I have company over anyway.
We usually eat at the breakfast bar or in the office. I’m realizing right now how much space the dining table is wasting.
Honestly, I mostly use my dining table to build model railroad stuff on. It’s glass, so it is perfectly flat and ideal for building nice square things.
For a little while, my wife was using the table for puzzles. I had no patience for her rate of progress so I bought a puzzle board that stow under the couch and sometimes makes an appearance on the coffee table.
The benefits of being single, I answer to no one, and no one needs to be bothered by my hobbies.
Though with an aging mother, I feel like I have a kid. Off to her condo to swap out a toilet. Sigh.
Honestly, I swapped out the big heavy table my RV came with for a plastic tv tray-style table, but there needs to be _something_ you can eat at. I will sometimes eat on the couch, but not everything works well without a table and I didn’t get a camper with a full kitchen just so I can’t eat some things in it.
Exactly – that is the perfect compromise.
Personally, I have no interest in a “camper” that isn’t a 40′ coach conversion, so it’s never going to be a problem for me even if my brain falls out and I buy one of the silly things someday. 🙂
The typical high end Class A
“drinks 8. Feeds 4, sleeps 2.
Oh man TV tables. As a kid in the ’70s, it was a BIG deal if there was a major movie premiere on TV and mom gave permission to eat dinner in the living room. I got to break out the incredibly midcentch legs and trays and snap them together.
Yeah, this… except my ratios are reversed. I eat at my desk 99% of the time, and only rarely in other places, but that’s because I also watch TV at my desk, so that and the bed are about the only places I spend time in my house. 🙂 I’m in the kitchen just long enough to grab whatever food I brought home from work.
A lot of it has to do with tensions during dining. For example when I was a kid most kids ate in front of the TV. Not a good habit, but apparently a widespread one. It had a lot to do with having your self expression or individuality criticized or demeaned for an entire half hour is crushing to a kid. So we ate our Bagel Bites in front of the TV playing a show that reinforced the idea of being yourself while absent-mindedly running our greasy marinara sauce covered fingers through our frosted tip hair.
Also mom didn’t like when I played with my Gameboy while eating. That was a bigger reason to not sit down and eat.
I’m old – dinner was AT the table AT 6pm, be there or go hungry. Every day but Sunday. In the dining room where there was no TV. We did not eat in the living room, ever. I barely set foot in the living room – that was for company. We had a den – but didn’t eat in there either. Video games barely existed when I was a kid, I had pong, my kid brother got an Atari when I was in high school. I didn’t get a computer until I was a senior in college.
Sunday dinner was at 2pm. WHY? I have no idea, it’s a stupid New England thing that screws up the whole day. I have successfully broken my mother of that habit now that we live in Florida away from the rest of the family.
Frosted tips – child of the ’90s are we? 🙂
Other family members of mine were a bit more strict in their dinner habits, but as the years wore on everyone became lazy about enforcing them.
Also yes. And I enjoy reminding my peers that there was a lot of stupid stuff back then that we thought was cool. Frosted tips were our side-shaved bouffants and Power Rangers was our Fortnite.
Thankfully, since cameras were barely a thing when I was a kid (there are probably six pictures of me from birth to high school graduation), there is no photo record of some of the horrors of fashion that were thrust upon me in the ’70s. But there is one horrifying picture of me and my Mom where I had a big ol’ 70s afro and Mom had a matching frosted perm and stewardess-class warpaint on.
Every decade has it’s fashion horrors.
Part of it’s also just a TV thing. It’s harder to film 3+ people sitting around a table vs sitting on a couch facing more or less the same direction.
I see plenty of space to eat. If I have to cook in the RV, I’m not making steaks. A bowl of pasta or salad can be eaten in any seat.
Since I only look at RVs in the context of a couple and some dogs, I have always found the dining tables to be a huge waste of space and an obstacle to easy movement. I know they often exist just so they can convert to a bed, but I have no real need for an extra bed either.
I make steaks and other grilled meats all the time in bad weather. My attached grill is under the awning so unless it’s really biblical out I can generally run out there to cook something. I don’t necessarily want to sit and get misted by rain splashes while I eat though.
I was only considering weather bad enough to keep all of the prep / cooking inside the RV. If I were grilling steaks on the grill, I’d probably bring them in and slice them before putting them on the plates. I do the same for chicken.
I grew up eating every meal seated at the table. My wife grew up eating in view of the TV. I guess our current setup is a compromise between the two.
That is fine if you never have any guests stay for dinner.
Folding table and chairs outside would work. I’d spring for a restaurant before entertaining in a van.