quote:

STEVE: International helping Newmar-how so? ED

ED: Continuous Improvement, imagine the shot in the arm from the Navistar Engineering Group.

Yup, contiuous improvement

Monaco has now completed the deal and International is to start immediately with the manufacturing of the chassis's.

quote:

Originally posted by Lug_Nut:
Monaco has now completed the deal and International is to start immediately with the manufacturing of the chassis's.

Is that a completely accurate statement? The Roadmaster assets have been transferred into a new company owned 49/51 by Monaco and International and IT will be producing chassis in the plant used by Roadmaster and leased to the new joint venture company.

Is there any reason to believe there are ANY immediate changes in the RM chassis being produced? Frankly, I doubt it. We will likely not see many changes until the next model year - and anyone who knows lead times knows that those changes are usually locked in by now.

I agree, I think changes will at first be slow, but in time I would think we will see IFS and like features. Additionally I would think they will try to increase their chassis market completing with Spartan and Freightliner for other MH manufacturers.

Update:

Roadmaster will continue building the RM Chassis and they have leased space to Workhorse to build the R-Series. There will be 2 separate lines and products coming out of this plant. I will find out more about this later this week while attending the FMCA Convention in Perry, GA.

There is a rather large 2 page advertising in the May issue of Motorhome magazine on Page 4 and 5 for Roadmaster Chassis.

From everything said it appear to only affect Elkhart production. The S chassis are produced in the the same building as the coaches, the other Coburg chassis' are produced in the old SMC Magnum plant in Harrisburg and then transported to Coburg (only a few miles).

The problem with using chassis' produced in Elkhart for Coburg products is transportation costs.

One of the distinguishing things in a high end coaches is the proprietory chassis. I think the IH/Monaco joint venture will focus on expanding the Workhorse market niche rather than replacing the Coburg chassis'.