We got the Tempo/Autocruse and Heart Of England Forums

kevwright

Yep, we have it.

Last few days were "interesting", got a call from Autocruise on Monday (we were due to collect today, Wednesday), to say "sorry, Heart of England have noticed a couple of small dents on the roof, and they are not happy to hand it over like this, we (Autocruise) need to get it back to the factory to fix the dents.....

Well, I called Gary at Heart Of England and said, how bad is it, would i have spotted it? Nope, but neither we nor Autocruise are happy with that,, so what they are doing is picking it up tomorrow (Tuesday!) and they will have it back for Wednesday as planned......transporter each way.

Yeah, right I thought like that is gonna happen.....but it did, so a big thanks to Helen at Autocruise, and also to Gary for not just letting it go.

So, as we drove up to Heart Of England this morning, (one way hire car so we could both come back in the Tempo) from Ipswich, about 108 miles, our van was still on a transporter back from the Autocruise factory!!

We got to Europcar depot in Northampton about 12 noon, and Gary sent over a driver in his own car to pick us up and take us back to the showroom.

Got to meet Jayne, Gary's wife, and the saleman Karl all for the first time, since we did all of the sale over the phone.

All 3 people are very nice, friendly, unhurried and clearly very interested in motorhoming, not just making a few quid!

At this point we signed up the 10 year (gulp) finance and sorted out all the paperwork, then Karl took us out to a nicely covered area and gave us a superb demo of the van, inside and out, very much keeping in mind we were totally new to this lark, but crucially, NOT patronising.

Took a good couple of hours to go through everything, and the van looked great.

We have got one issue to sort out with Autocruise, and that is the 3rd travel seat in the van, in that the seat belt is currently unusable!!!

Well, not strictly true, if you leave the seat access door open and laying on the floor of the motorhome, you can then pass the thick metal stalk that holds the female end of the seatbelt though, but the door can not be closed.

All the other manufactuers use webbing so it passes through the access door, but Autocruise really seem to have messed this up.

Karl phoned them there and then about this and the great thing was he could talk to the safety officer without messing about. Seems like Autocruise knew about this as they are planning to resovle it be redesigning the trim so the stack can fit in a gap, and be usable.

Gary, the owner tried to resolve this for us by taking a matching part (but using webbing) from a showroom Auto Sleeper, and was about to fit this when Autocruise phoned back and told him he could not do so due to liability laws. The fact he was prepared to do this, and he had to remove a water tank on a showroom model shows just how dedicated these people are.

Apart from the seatbelt issue (which we are promised will be sorted without hassle to us) there was little else wrong, just a missing panel from a seat side (passenger) which is on its way, and the outdoor seats to match the interior which were in the early reviews are missing, presumed deleted!

All in all, given that we knew our Tempo was one of the first off the line, we are delighted, the 100 odd mile drive back was brilliant, so easy to drive.

Looking forward to playing some more tomorrow, but for now, thats it, if anyone wants more information or specific information from a real production Tempo, just feel free to shout.

Kev

JohnsCrossMotorHomes

Nice one, obviously a family owned business that looks afer its customers unlike some big ones that have been mentioned.

Good luck and many years of happy MHoming.

Regards

Broom

Hi

I like good news it makes my day

Broom

reeventu

We put a holding deposit on the Tempo pending viewing at Marquis.

we went to see it and I am afraid we are not going forward with the purchase for a few reasons

Firstly the squab on the 3rd seat is far too deep and basically IMO makes the seat impossible to use for anything but the shortest trip. You would have to have very long thighs to position your bottom at the back of the seat and your legs on the floor.

Similarly the the passenger seat when facing to the rear leaves your legs dangling in space , again unless you are quite tall.

We also found the seat belt problem with the third seat.

lastly despite the increased length of the vehicle the bed length is too short. Why did they not sacrifice a little of the kitchen / toilet size and increase the bed length. It probably only needed 2 inches?

The rear kitchen/toilet end of the van is excellent but these small details spoil an otherwise well designed product.

The problem now is simply what do we buy or do we stick with the excellent old Tribute.

The new Tribute 650 is spoilt by the crazy shower room and badly positioned wardrobe. The 550 has no oven. And space is still compromised by the small overhead locker and internal water tank.

The new symbol has no double glazing and limited opening widows.

The IH and Timberland seem very expensive.

Any ideas would be gratefully received

kevwright

reeventu.

I think you are going to struggle with the 3rd seat squab issue, all the vans we looked at are much worse than the Tempo except the Adria Twin which has the train carriage style, lousy for lounging we thought.

When you tried the squab on the 3rd seat, was the funny little wedge things in place to angle the seat forward, makes all the difference but I must admit that we do not care so much about the 3rd seat, it will only really be used as a anchor point for our dog harness.

With all of these High Tops, the passenger seat when turned always seem to leave feet dangling, one company have solved it (Auto Sleeper Symbol) by raising the roof and putting in a false floor, and another by providing a foot stool, we plan to solve by getting a cheap foot stool or looking at pulling the 3rd travel seat forward as a bed) and resting (clean!) feet on this, not sure if the heights will work though.

Also, I don't like the GRP roofs that AS use, I reckon a factory fixed roof is the best bet.

Again, with the bed, you did try it with the cabs seats forward and the infill pieces in place? Not going to be an issue for us as we are not tall.

I very much doubt the perfect motorhome exists, we did not even look at IE or Timberland, far too rich for us I am afraid.

The Adria was out due to those train seats, and the Tribute has a poor build quality about it in my opinion, and the shower is just too small as you say.

Tribute_650

What a good service your experienced, was a lot better than ours. We picked up our new Tribute from Danum Leisure in Doncaster, got it home and found some unpolished polish across the top side, polished it off and found 2 scratches, a dent, overspray and masking tape !!! rang them up, was told to fetch it back, they had a look and said "Nar it was not like that when it left here"

I showed that the scratches actually ran under the Tribute stripe that runs down the side so I could not have done the damage so they polished them out but did nothing with the rest plus 7 months on I am still awaiting new seat base covers as they were damaged aswell...What can you do other than sort it yourself............ I still feel P'd off when I think of it, great to see that not all dealers are like this!

650

ingram

MaxandPaddy

Glad your story turned out well Kev,Autocruise are pretty good at resolving problems and I am sure they will continue to give you good aftercare service if you ever need it again in the future.
Enjoy your new Tempo! Very Happy

Val

reeventu

The reason to change is fairly simple , I really need cab aircon ( for southern Spain) and I would like to upgrade to the new spec vehicle from Fiat/Peugeot etc.

This is because it has all disc brakes , ABS , drivers airbag etc as well as the 2.2 ( 120BHP engine ) and 6 speed gearbox.

I tow a trailer with a racecar as well so these points are interesting for me.

Since posting I am considering a revised look at the new symbol ( but I worry about the ventilation and also the Devon Provence ( but I am not familiar with the Renault )

Any comments again please