This morning I accompanied Robert (Peter Glaze), a prospective Eriba owner who many of the members who attended the Gloucester meeting will have met, to AL's premises in Poole so that he could look at vans and chat to the sales staff. My role was to navigate him there and back avoiding the holiday bottlenecks so common in the area at this time of year.

As usual, the staff at AL were more than happy to let us wander around all their vans without restriction but Jason was always on hand to answer our questions and point out things of interest. On the subject of the differences between vans made in France or Germany, Jason demonstrated some subtle changes in the latter aimed at making them more convenient and practical in use, things such as the full width high-level rear locker (partial with open cubby holes in the French); improved knee room and mirror positioning in the German toilet compartment; a split door on the between beds locker (on the French van it was full-width and could only be opened from one side) and the moulded as opposed to plain entrance door.

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The plain (brown) door on a French-built van can be seen in this picture

I asked Jason how they go about a re-skinning repair to a dented aluminium panel as I'd been told that they simply fit a new skin over the old one. I was reassured to hear that the old skin is removed entirely and used as a template from which the new skin is cut so that it provides an exact replacement that fits perfectly. Also did you know that the replacement aluminium repair panels that they use are printed at the factory and not painted? Neither did I.

Hidden away behind some other vans was a skeleton Eriba that illustrates beautifully how the Touring range is constructed.

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In the above shot you can see Robert adopting his butch 'negotiating stance' while chatting with Jason.

During our visit we met a local Troll owner who had called in about a battery problem and a young couple with a baby who were there to look at the range of Eribas available. Naturally I plugged the forum and hope that they will join us.

It was good to see that AL have at long last decided to provide a high quality, printed hitch cover with all Eribas sold. When I mentioned to Jason that I had suggested this to Steve in an email four years ago, look what he presented me with!

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So far as I'm aware, all production has been transferred to Germany. I came into Robert's discussion with Jason half way through but I assumed that they were discussing the differences between one of the final French models and a more recent German example.

In the wash room of the French van, for example, there was very little knee room when sitting on the toilet seat, and the solution to this was to slide back a sort of horizontally mounted, silver coloured roller blind on the under-basin cupboard. The German wash room had been redesigned to make it more comfortable to use without having to open a unit door.

All the changes were quite subtle but the French van's rear transverse high-level locker looked awful. It had a centrally located locker with an oval-shaped door that looked completely out of place and then a 'hole' at either end. These cubby holes would be useless for storing anything in transit as the contents would be liable to fall out onto the floor.

All this gave the impression that following the transfer of production to Germany, the designers had revamped the interior styling so as to make the vans more user-friendly. The German moulded door, for example provides valuable additional storage pockets and looks less stark than the flat, brown French one.

I'm happy with my old Triton.

Hi Martin and Keith and Sue.
As both your vans were built in 2012 then they would have been built in German for the Cernay Plant in France closed down in 2010. Here's a video of the last days :- Last Days at Cernay.
Towards the end of the video, some of the employees are seen standing in front of the last Eriba produced there and are holding up a board with the VIN no. on it.
I wonder who owns that van?

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Randa