2019 Columbia Northwest reviews

It is a measure of how much we like our Aliner Scout that, despite the litany of complaints we list below, we simply love it, think it is excellent value for money, and would buy another in a heartbeat. However, if Columbia Northwest offered it as a shell, I would unhesitatingly buy that and do the internal stuff myself with IKEA products or something similar. That's not because I claim to be a great workman - I don't - but I could do ten times as good a job as whoever assembled the interior of our trailer. Our Scout was bought "stripped" - not even a sink or fridge - and I am extremely glad, based on the assembly quality of what the manufacturer actually did install. The good: Very clever exterior design. 8 feet of headroom at the center point, yet fits in a garage. Convenience of a pop-up without the hassle of the canvas. Gives the impression of being bigger inside than outside. Huge windows, deeply tinted, and excellent outside visibility. Fairly easily towed. Floor is sturdy, weatherproof, and good-looking. Very livable. The not-so-good: Fit and finish is so-so outside and much worse inside. Outside, the two parts of the Dutch-barn door are slightly warped, with gaps at the top of one and the bottom of the other. Caulking is not particularly neat. There are laughable foam inserts under some adjacent surfaces which of course shrink and fall out. The roof vent for the fan is not mounted squarely. Inside, you will be lucky to find a single "square" enclosed closet/cupboard or storage area - they are all poorly constructed, apparently by unskilled labor. With the exception of the work surfaces, the Formica-like panels are in fact covered in fragile paper, as you will discover as soon as you rub anything against them and expose the wood underneath. Dragging the bed out to the double size will inevitably tear and scratch those surfaces on your nice new camper. There are places where the wall-covering is double thickness: this is apparently where it was damaged during assembly, so a strip of new covering was simply applied over the old, sometimes of a slightly different color to the original. The table support design makes wobble inevitable, and the sharp unfinished edges on the end of the support leg will scratch your fingers and any surface you may lay them against. We recommend you take sandpaper to them before they do any harm. The cupboard door hinges are secured with small self-tapping screws into the particle board vertical panels and will tear out sooner or later: you might as well through-bolt them as soon as you take delivery. Poor workmanship throughout: perhaps the best example is an angle bracket supposedly securing a work surface on a cabinet, which had a screw neatly inserted but - alas! - not through the hole in the angle bracket. Show less