Napoleon Prestige


 
Dave in KC

Dave in KC

TVWBB Guru
Seeing Jon stray a little has put me in the mood to do the same.
I picked up a Big Green Egg, and promptly turned it last week so this weekend
this Napoleon Prestige caught my eye. Our neighbors to the north seem
to have built a very impressive grill.
It seems to be very comparable to a Genesis, although with 4 burners
and the infrared rear burner also. It also came with a nearly full tank,
cover and a brand new rotisserie. The previous owner took hellagood
care of it and always kept it stored in the garage. This is yet another
casualty of Traeger.

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The pics you see are basically the way I got it. The only thing I did was
run those crazy heavy duty grates through the dish washer and my wife
wipe of a few greasy finger prints. I plan to take it out back on the deck
and take some better quality pics prior to listing.

Anyone else here own one of these?
 
Wow, that is in great shape and they are supposed to be pretty high quality grills.
 
Napoleon grills have become very popular in Europe and seem to have taken a quite a bit market share over there. I also looked at some recently and they seem to be really good quality. If I would be in the market for a new gas grill I would definitely look at these. However used ones are really rare in my neck of the woods. And if you find one they are normally still expensive.
However their entry models are also built with painted steel cabinets vs SS cabinets. I wonder how they hold up in regards to rust.
 
I would strongly consider keeping this grill, if I didn't have
grills coming out of my ears already, and frankly it is much
larger than what I need also.
 
Yah, I was expecting something higher than that for sure. My guess is those things topped the 4 burner Summit grills when they were new.
 
Nice score. Napoleon is the only grill I would possibly consider over a weber. Still don't care for those gimmicky wavy grates though.
 
Napoleon BBQ's are popular in Canada - Napoleon is located about an hour north of Toronto ON in Barrie ON.
They have some unique features like the wavy steel rod cooking grates, bottom mounted infra red burners and lots of interesting accessories (Smoker tube, charcoal pan that converts a gas grill to charcoal etc)
I have a Napoleon Prestige 750 - it's a double lid 84" wide monster with 2 bottom mount infra-red burners under one lid and a 3 burner + rear rotisserie burner regular gas grill under the other + a side burner.
I use it as my Spring/Summer/Fall BBQ and have a Weber Genesis S320 as my Winter beater.
Since I have both and have partially disassembled both for cleaning - I can honestly say that the build quality of the Weber is far superior to the Napoleon:
Napoleon wavy heat plates (vs Weber flavourizer bars) are made of lighter gauge steel.
Napoleon spot weld a strip of metal across the back of the cooking chamber that acts as the rear support for the heat plates and after a few years the spot welds fail and the support bracket falls off. (Napoleon sell a replacement strip with pre-drilled holes and recommend that you drill holes through the back of the BBQ and use stainless steel stove bolts and washers to fasten the replacement bracket).
Napoleon silk screen the burner control labels on the stainless steel control panel which wears off after a few years. The mfr solution is to sell a set of clear Mac-Tac designation stickers and they offer to sell a complete new control panel.
The lid has two rubber bumpers at the bottom edge that deteriorate/become brittle due to constant heating and cooling and eventually fall out. (Their parts dept stock replacements and depending on which rep you speak to at the Customer Service Dept they will either charge you shipping and provide the rubber stoppers free or will throw in free shipping as well).
Their parts (much like Weber) are readily available and are reasonably priced.

Napoleon also have lower lines (much like Weber Spirit) - Rogue, Legend, Triumph, Lex that are sold in big box lumber/hardware stores that have a much shorter warranty and lower build quality vs the Prestige line.

BTW there are a couple of other Canadian brands that are popular - at the lower end Broil King and at the higher end Crown Verity.
 
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It's also interesting that napoleon is outsourcing some of their grills to China just as Weber has done.
 
Great information Marty. I did not expect Napoleon to be worse than Weber. In a German grill forum the opinion seems to be the other way round. Here in the US they are really rare. I have around 100+ stores in a 30 miles range who carry Weber grills and/or Weber gear in one form or another but less then 10 stores who carry Napoleon. And that also shows on the used market. Hardly ever any used ones show up for sale. I have looked at a few new ones and they looked really good. But of course the real quality only shows after a few years of usage.
 
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