Buying a motorhome
Finding a motorhome to buy in Spain is pretty much the same as the UK. You find adverts on classified sites, or Facebook market. Then contact the ones that look interesting, hopefully visit some, and eventually buy one you like the look of.
However like everywhere else there are plenty of scammers – especially on Facebook market. Keep an eye out for brand new profiles, sellers who want money upfront or anything that just simply sounds too good to be true.
In Spain, check out the website MilAnuncios.com (or thousand adverts) which is full of classified adverts for near enough everything. Motorhomes are known as “autocaravannas” so search for this on Google and Facebook market. You can also search for “campers” or “westfalia” to match VW-style campervan vehicles. Another good website is coches.net which specialises in cars (coches) and other vehicles.
One thing that you cannot use is ebay.es which does not sell vehicles of any kind. I think this is related to how much more complcated buying and selling vehicles is in Spain. If you have any other suggested sites please add them to the comments.
When we found one we liked the look of at a dealer, we went to visit it. This bit seems to be normal practice in Spain, but was strange to us. We had to pay a 1000€ refundable deposit for them to hold the motorhome until we could look at it. If we liked it after the viewing we would pay 50% of the asking price, with the balance payable on collection.
As it happens we loved the motorhome, paid 50% and collected it about a month later!
We got a Challenger Eden 601. I had not heard of Challenger before, but it looks to be a brand name of the French company, Chausson which I have heard of. Certainly driving through France this month, I did see plenty of Challenger motorhomes.
Spain only has one significant motorhome maker, Benimar, so most motorhomes are imported from France and Germany. Like all vehicles in Spain, they are expensive to buy.
Ours had a French number plate when we first saw it, which became a Spanish one when we collected it. This is a good reason to use a dealer as they can take care of the importation (called matriculation). If you are going to import a motorhome it has to be a left-hand-drive model with the habitation door opening on the right-hand-side. A British motorhome is not possible to import because of the door location.
Problems
Despite testing everything, the first night we used the motorhome the fridge failed, and the aircon unit was not cold. I gave the dealer a call and they said to bring it in to be sorted.
We got the motorhome back about six weeks later with a new fridge and a replacement for the aircon unit. Despite the problems and how long it took to rectify I am hapy with the response from the dealer.
Conclusion
We love our motorhome, and have already had several adventures in it. I will be writing some articles in the future about motorhoming here in Spain.
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