Country Coach finds new niche with `Rhapsody'.

Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

What do you call a $1.3 million motor coach so powerful it can burn rubber, so luxurious it features two bathrooms, so over-the-top it boasts no fewer than four flat-screen televisions and two home-theater systems?

You could call it Extravagant or Audacious or Conspicuous Consumption. Country Coach, the Junction City motor home builder that makes this vehicle, picked Rhapsody. As in: The enthusiastic expression of joy; a state of elated bliss; ecstasy.

Whether a 53,000-pound, diesel-powered land yacht can elevate a person to a state of elated bliss is an open question. But there's no doubt the Rhapsody represents Country Coach's boldest bid to live up to the promise of its slogan: "The world's finest motor coaches."

In the Rhapsody, Country Coach is offering a combination of "extreme performance" and "ultimate luxury," marketing director Matt Howard said.

"This is a product for somebody who lives a life without compromise," he said. "It sounds trite, but it's true."

The Rhapsody 900 is for people who don't blink at price tags with two commas. And in the early going, it appears there's no shortage of big boys who like big toys - NASCAR drivers, professional golfers, hedge fund managers, retired entrepreneurs - willing to pony up seven figures in hopes of attaining Rhapsody.

Country Coach spent more than two years and $2 million on research and development to build the Rhapsody, Howard said, and the company is confident that the demand will outstrip production.

A New Jersey dealer sold the first Rhapsody in April. The second production model is on a dealer's lot in Florida. The third one is under construction at Country Coach's Prevost bus conversion plant on Airport Road and will be on the market by next month. The waiting list is already up to nine, Howard said.

`Give me the best'

The Rhapsody story began in September 2004, when Country Coach CEO Jay Howard laid down a challenge to his designers and engineers: "Build me a motor home that is better than anything out there on the market. Give me the best."

At the time, Country Coach was a subsidiary of National R.V. Holdings Inc. The Perris, Calif., company was in the midst of a serious losing streak that continues to this day, posting red ink in 18 of the past 22 quarters. (In February, National R.V. sold Country Coach to a group of investors led by Los Angeles investment banker Bryant Riley for $38.75 million cash and the assumption of $13 million in debt.)

The Country Coach division, though, was profitable, which Howard said made it possible to sell the Rhapsody project to his corporate overseers.

"The numbers are so compelling and the market potential so compelling the board couldn't tell me no," he said.

What Howard saw was a gap in Country Coach's offerings and a market opportunity. The company's most luxurious motor home, the Affinity, has a list price of $870,000. Its Prevost bus conversions sell for $1.45 million to $1.6 million. Howard figured the brand needed a model somewhere in between.

Jeff Johnston, a freelance automotive writer in Eugene who spent 18 years as technical director at Trailer Life and MotorHome magazines, said demand for motor homes in general ebbs and flows, but there never seems to be a shortage of buyers of the high-end RVs.

"The type of people who buy these vehicles are typically a lot less concerned about what the economy is doing and what the price of fuel is doing," he said. "They have their money and they're going to buy them regardless."

Matt Howard said that while rising fuel prices hurt the RV industry, it matters less with high-end RVs because of the "financial flexibilty" of the buyer. "It's not a prohibitive factor," he said.

With his marching orders from Howard, Gary Obermire, senior vice president for operations and the man in charge of the project, gathered his engineers and designers and went to work. The "blank sheet of paper" directive, Obermire said, is "an engineer's delight."

Exterior designers looked for ways to make the outside of the coach look good. Taking styling cues from automotive design, they created body lines that carry for the 45-foot length of the vehicle.

Another team worked on the interior of the vehicle, striving to create something distinct and luxurious within the confines of a 45-foot-long, 8.5-foot-wide, 7-foot-tall box.

Inside the coach, designers tried to create the same kinds of amenities as a luxury home, Obermire said. A key piece was installation of a Crestron system, which allows the Rhapsody owner to control audio-visual systems and other electronics, heating and air-conditioning, shades and lighting from a hand-held touch screen.

Instead of the standard wood cabinets with raised panels, designers went for sleek, European-style cabinets with automotive-like paint. Four slide-out rooms expand the interior space when the Rhapsody is at rest.

The designers created a master suite with a full bath in the back of the coach, with a guest bath in the main compartment.

"How do people live in their homes?" Obermire said. "When they have guests, they don't want them in their private bath."

Tire-spinning power

Perhaps the biggest challenge was finding the right power train. Engineers went looking for the biggest, most powerful diesel engine they could find, and settled on a Caterpillar C-15 that generates 625 horsepower and a whopping 2,050 foot-pounds of torque.

"Torque is what the driver feels as they step on the gas and go back in their seat," Obermire said.

But to get all that power to the wheels, the engineers needed to mate the engine to an equally mighty transmission. And at the time, no transmission existed that could do that.

"You want an ultimate coach - what holds you back? A transmission is one of those things," Jay Howard said.

Caterpillar made a beefy transmission to get its 150-ton dump trucks up 30 percent mountain grades, but it was made of cast iron and weighed too much to put in an RV, Howard said.

So Country Coach struck a deal with Caterpillar to jointly develop a similarly powerful eight-speed automatic transmission with a lighter cast aluminium housing.

The result: a power train that can spin the tires on a 53,000-pound coach, that powers up hills with no hesitation, and that exceeded 100 mph on a test track, according to Jay Howard.

"We may go for an RV land speed record," he said in all seriousness.

Aside from all that power, the engineers wanted to make their 45-foot-long land yacht as nimble as possible.

They looked to the suspension, and specifically, to the rear axles. Like many big RVs, the Rhapsody has two rear axles.

The forward most one is the drive axle, where power is delivered to the wheels. The rear axle is a steerable axle.

That means at slower speeds, when the driver turns the steering wheel, the wheels on the rear axle turn with the front wheels, enabling sharp turns in tight urban environments, and a 36 1/2 -foot turning radius. As the coach speeds up, the rear axle provides less steering.

Lucky No. 7

By September 2005, the engineers and designers had an idea of what the exterior would look like, and picked the main floor plan. They began extensive testing and engineering to make sure the various systems would work together and hold up under daily use.

Various components, such as the entry door and the slide-outs, underwent cycle testing - opening and closing thousands of times - to simulate how they would hold up after years of use.

In March 2006, workers began fabricating the first Rhapsody. Engineers are scientists, which means they're generally not prone to irrational notions of luck or superstition. Still, when Country Coach engineers went to work assembling the first Rhapsody, they elected not to call it No. 1, choosing instead to label it R007. As in Lucky No. 7.

"It seemed like the thing to do at the time," Jay Howard said. "I'm not superstitious, but I don't press my luck either."

The chassis and exterior fiberglass shell of the Rhapsody was built at Country Coach's main plant in Junction City, then driven over to the Prevost bus conversion plant on Airport Road.

That's because the workers who take a Canadian-made Prevost-brand bus shell and turn it into a luxury coach are Country Coach's most skilled, elite craftsmen, Obermire said.

Five months later, in August 2006, the Rhapsody was ready for road testing. Crews took it to the GM Desert Proving Grounds in Mesa, Ariz., for three grueling weeks, checking all the systems - engine-cooling, transmission, brakes, suspension and the steerable axle as well as overall durability - to find out, as Obermire said, "Is anything going to fall apart?"

After more work and fine-tuning in Eugene, the Rhapsody was ready for its coming out party: the Bass Pro Shops 500 NASCAR race at Atlanta Motor Speedway in October 2006.

To get it there from Oregon, a Country Coach engineer and a Cat engineer drove it cross country, stopping only for fuel, testing it all the while. In Atlanta, County Coach officials parked the Rhapsody in the infield and showed it off to dealers and NASCAR drivers.

In April, Cartec Motor Coach in Bordentown, N.J., sold Rhapsody R007. Even with an asking price of $1.3 million, Cartec sales manager Robert Kelliher said he doesn't think he'll have any trouble moving them. Most prospective customers have already spent $700,000 or $800,000 for a high-end coach, so getting over the $1 million mark "is not a huge jump," he said.

"An extra thousand dollars a month to them, for a one-off, top, top, top of the line RV, is not a big deal," he said. "A lot of our customers are big time toy buyers."

Lloyd Ferry, a sales consultant at Lazydays RV Super Center outside Tampa, Fla., is a Country Coach fan, and he's hopeful the Rhapsody sells well.

"If it looks anything like the Magna or the Affinity, I would say they have another winner," he said.

Country Coach plans to ramp up production and eventually build about 20 Rhapsodies a year, Matt Howard said. It could, but won't, build many more than that, because "we want to make sure it's the world's finest coach," he said.

Given the early demand, Jay Howard said he's confident that the Rhapsody will do well.

"It would have to be a huge disaster to do us, or me, in," he said. "Quite candidly, I don't concern myself with that. It's a risky business. If you're not risk-tolerant, you don't belong in the RV industry."

RHAPSODY, BY THE NUMBERS

List price: $1.3 million

Power: 625 horsepower and 2,050 foot-pounds of torque generated by a 15.2-liter Caterpillar diesel engine

Bathrooms: Two - a master bath and a guest bath

Televisions: Four, including one hidden behind a one-way mirror in the master bath

Weight: 53,000 pounds

Fuel capacity: 211 gallons

Miles per gallon: Undisclosed