West Country MotorHomes

4 www.wcmh.co.uk Back at his desk now, but Steve is training up the next generation to take us forward The UK’s Premier Dealer www.wcmh.co.uk How did it all start? We founded West Country Motorhomes in 1979. We initially went into motorhomes because my father and mother went away on holiday to Spain in a motorhome. We were selling cars at the time – from our original site at Lower Weare. But when people were coming in, it was more to look at the motorhome than the cars. My father got asked more than a few times if he’d like to sell the motorhome but he said no because it was their holiday vehicle. Eventually he got fed up with the requests, agreed to sell it… then immediately went out and bought another motorhome! What were the next steps? Back then we didn’t have the resources to buy brand new motorhomes to sell and we certainly didn’t have any stocking plans with the manufacturers. But it was all working out well. We got involved with a company in Bristol, buying motorhomes from them. Then we bought some Volkswagens from another company in Bristol. We bought the vans and refurbished them with Richard Holdsworth kits. We also did a few conversions ourselves. And we bought vans that we sent to Auto-Sleepers, Autohomes, Devon and Holdsworth for converting. All of which got us further up the ladder for motorhomes. What do you remember of the early days? Gosh. Bearing in mind I was still only 20 years old when we established West Country Motorhomes. In those very early days, motorhome holidays were new to us because we didn’t really do holidays. My Celebrating the good times 40 years in the making? West Country Motorhomes’ boss Steve Pike tells our story… and gives a glimpse of the future My father had a stroke when he was 52, I was 29 at the time. He was out of the business instantly and it all landed on my lap, big time. Basically, I grew up overnight.