Hey Scrounger,
Similar to you I have found that I will never get everything I want. I think that was the biggest hurdle that I had to get over and now that I have I'm just working to a budget. I'm fortunately enough to be in a position to be able to purchase a hard floor, so there's the first tick! Then was it to be forward or rear folding. This was a easy discison for me, forward folding it is, tick two. Now it starts to get a little harder. Water capacity, storage space, is the fridge space large enough to hold our current fridge, construction quality, etc. and believe you me the list goes on forever.
What I have found though, is out of the 100 odd campers sold in Australia, a large percentage are manufactured over in China and then shipped here to be sold. Some brands will do some minor fit up works over here before their sold. The other thing is in the price range I'm looking at they are all pretty much the same. Yes one may have a slightly different set up, or slightly more water capacity, etc, however then this is offset by another company giving you some slightly different that you may like also.
Then you throw in the most challenging part of the project-the good wife! Given this is going to be a family camper there was always going to be some imput. And as expected we both had a different favorite! The best thing I did was get a very large white board and list the specifications on the 3 campers we have narrowed it down to! Saying all that though, it may all be thrown out the window when we attended the 4x4 show in mid August!
As mentioned in a previous post I would appreciate any feedback or advice anyone may have. Every little bit helps.
Cheers Keano