Quote Originally Posted by pognumber26
Two recent stories to relay...In the fall, a Nascar driver took delivery on an '06 quad slide...Aprx price $1,000,000...After two weeks decided he didn't like it and asked Newell to trade it for a different coach...They offered him $550k!!!!! He turned to a well known Prevost converter who did the trade at $600k...Go figure?? Yesterday I was speaking with an '04 Newell, who is looking to trade his lightly used coach,aprx 24,000 miles,with EVERY option they offered at the time...Newell offered him only 25% of his original purchase price and a couple of the Prevost converters he has approached were hesitant to even take his coach in trade...Nice to look at impossible to get rid of ??!!
I appreciate being alerted to the above post. The bottom line: these allegations are simply untrue.

Specifically, no NASCAR driver with a 2006 Newell has asked us to trade it for a different coach. If any owner of a quad slide 2006 Newell inquired about trading, we would certainly offer substantially more than $550,000. In fact, a preowned 2006 Newell quad slide coach would resell today, in real dollars, for about 90 percent of the original transaction price.

Further, a typical 2004 Newell is worth a bunch more than 25% of its original purchase price. If this story has any truth to it, there is something very significant more to the story than we are being told. Like the coach was used as a mobile dog kennel, or was driven off-road for 200,000 miles, or has some such issue. The truth is that we are currently calculating the current WHOLESALE value of nice 2004 Newells at about 70 percent of the net retail prices when these coaches were sold new. Not bad considering we have just started delivering 2007 models, and these 04s are now three years old.

I personally do not like negative selling, and if these stories were started by Prevost sales people or Prevost fans, I suggest they consider touting their product on its merits rather then spreading this type of garbage. Indeed, I have great respect for the Prevost product and factory organization. I used to have regular, very pleasant visits with the former partner and president of Prevost, Andre Normand. Andre consistently suggested we build our coaches using his shells, and I just as consistently responded, with a smile, that we enjoyed being an alternative to a bus conversion. We stilll do, and are willing to discuss our product on its merits, including very good resale values.

I also appreciated Jeffery's post on internet marketing. In fact, we have had a very complete web site for several years ( www.newellcoach.com ), and have sold a significant number of coaches from leads developed from the web site. One example of our progressive approach is that we have virtually always posted the prices of our used coaches on our site, something that most of our competition does not do. Perhaps Jeffery is referring to the fact that we have not often used the internet sales sites a great deal. To the extent that we may not have used these sites as much as some others, this has been a marketing decision that is subject to change rather than a policy decision based upon any fixed positions.

Thanks for the opportunity to respond to these two posts.

Karl Blade
Newell Coach Corp.