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Sadly you won’t find many on this forum that have actually owned a Land Rover of any kind, there are a couple of exceptions but their names escape me. Most on here will no doubt recommend you revert to a japanese hatchback or some other asian brand. I’m not about to claim Land Rover are perfect, they are not. But they do little worse (sometimes better!) than the German brands when it comes to luxury 4x4 reliability.
If you buy one, make sure it’s either the 4.4l diesel v8, or the 5.0l petrol v8. There will be plenty of 3.0 diesels around, the salesman will try and push you towards one, and they are lovely to drive, but that 3.0 is a Peugeot engine (erroneously described as a Jaguar engine by many reviewers including Clarkson!) is a ticking time bomb and must be avoided. Don’t be put off by the size of the 4.4l, it’s just as economical as the 3.0l.
Assuming you are going for a model from 2013 onwards, just be wary this is the first batch of a new model era, the previous Range Rover was built from 2002 to 2012. The later (post 2008ish) models have held their value well thanks to a switchover from BMW 7 series electronics (they also share the chassis with the E65 7 series) to Ford electronics which are much more robust. Have a look at used values for the 2011/12 range rovers and you’ll see what i mean.
Don’t get me wrong, Land Rover do have a habit of bringing cars to production before they’re entirely ready, then they’ll make hundreds of incremental improvements/redesigns to key components throughout the life of the vehicle. But even though the ones you’ll be looking at will be earlier cars, if they had teething issues this will have been taken care of during the previous owners’ warranty.
Buy one, see how you fare during the warranty period, then you can decide if it’s a Friday car or not. I know plenty of people who buy them, (even the 3.0!) and put 180,000 trouble free miles on them (i know not galactic mileage but high for the UK market. Others have been stung by untraceable (read incompetent dealers) faults and dealers who couldn’t care less.
It’s an inevitability that someone is going to say that oft repeated phrase by people who have never owned one, that you ‘take a land rover if you want to go to the desert, take a toyota if you want to come back again..’ - I saw a great retort to this on an Australian Land Rover: ‘Yeah, but at least the people building my car didn’t bomb Darwin!’
Buy one, nothing else comes close. Have the diffs, transfer box, and gearbox oils changed by the dealer and set a dashcam in the car to make sure they actually do it, or better take it to a reputable specialist but don’t tell the main dealer. Also don’t buy one with a tow bar fitted, these tend to be bought by equestrian types towing horse boxes, no reason why you should have to buy one that’s been subject to heavy use. Good luck!
(Edit - some great advice here but I've put in some paragraphs to give it more of a chance.)
Edited by Avant on 03/10/2018 at 00:21
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