Is the Winnebago Vista our modern equivalent?

[MR.D]

I've checked them out at several RV shows and they are very nice and seemingly pretty well constructed. I talked with a higher up at Winnebago Industries a year or so back when we were first considering a Toyota RV and asked him what his opinion of the Toyotas was. He said that his parents had a Winnebago on a Toyota and that it was fantastic. They'd no doubt still be making them if Toyota hadn't left the market. He gave me the canned story that the axle issue was really the fault of the consumers who had overloaded their RVs, which I think is just the manufacturers passing the blame but that's another story.

[RJCogburn]

We looked at the Vista a couple of years ago when we were thinking about getting back into RVing. It didn't quite do it for us, though I cannot specifically say why. I joined the yahoo Vista group and read their posts for a year or so and the members mostly seemed happy enough. Still didn't quite make it for us, tho.

Back in the early 90's we (wife and myself, two boys aged then 13 and 8) got ourselves an 82 Toy (keystone) and took off for a five week one time adventure with only a general idea of the direction in which we would head. Somehow, we all were happy enough in the small space and had the best time...so good that we decided to do it again the next year and for a couple more years thereafter...still recalled as the best family vacations.

But....kids got bigger and were not so interested in spending half the summer in close quarters with parents ( fair enough, I'd say) so those trips came to an end. Well, they are grown and off and for the last couple of years wife and I have talked about getting on the road again. We looked around casually, at the Vista and thought about others but no go.

Finally, this year I decided I just wanted...just had to have....another Toy with a similar layout to our first one...the large rear windows and table in the rear. Called around, looked around, stared spending a lot of time, probably too much(!) lurking on ebay and rvtrader.

Happy ending to our story, found what we wanted on e-bay a bit ago and now are the proud parents of 86 Conquest. It is in good shape, everything seems to work and the shakedown cruise is next weekend. Hope to camp in Toronto in August so we can see the BoSox play (tickets to Fenway are quite dear and hard to get).

That is a very long answer to your question, but I'd say "No." There is no modern equivalent ;^)

Regards.....

[MR.D]

No doubt the VW powered Vista isn't the equivalent, but it's about the closest new RV to what the Toyotas offer. Congrats on your find! We too recently purchased a Toyota based RV, a '90 Dolphin V6. We got it from the original owners, and from what I've come to find out we stole it from them at only $6.5k Everything works perfectly, it just doesn't have a gen, micro, or awning and was incredibly dirty on the outside, inside was perfect. We already had a 6 month old Honda EU2000 gen which does run our AC, so we're happy to not have to carry a gen around unless we need it. After many hours of elbow grease I've gotten all the road grime off of the outside and it now really looks like a $10k+ Dolphin, we couldn't be happier. Ours is the model with the couch, barrel chair, and L shaped dinette which was our first choice of floorplans. Our first trip will be over Memorial Day.