Range Rovers, What's your experience? (2011, mileage, sell, Ford)
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A neighbor of mine bought a new Range Rover a few years ago, and the neighborhood joke became, "What color is George's loaner car this week?". That overpriced piece of junk was in the dealer's service department once or twice every month--sometimes for days at a time.
After a couple of years, he got tired of the incredibly unreliable nature of that beast, and he bought a VW to replace it. Clearly, this guy doesn't do a lot of research on reliability before buying a vehicle.
At least he went from the fire to the frying pan . . . .
We had two Range Rovers. We assumed the first one was just a lemon because we bought it used. The "new" one was even worse. I've had cars with over 100,000 miles that gave me less trouble.
Genuine question here: After all these years of unreliability and poor reputation, who actually buys Range Rovers? I mean, you could buy a super-reliable Toyota Land Cruiser that offers the same off-road ability and be done with it. Or if you want more luxury you could get a BMW/Mercedes/Lexus SUV. Why a Range Rover?
Nothing in the large 4x4 market offers nearly the luxury of RR. Have you seen the interior? It's in a whole different league to BMW, Merc etc. Very close to Rolls Royce in terms of quality and feel. A BMW X5 for instance is a bland plastic fest next to RR.
And nothing is better off road than a Range Rover. It is the best luxury 4x4 in the world by a long distance. A land Cruiser is great off road but to describe it as a luxury vehicle is just silly. It is an agricultural workhorse with leather seats.
Especially now the new model RR has come along. I drove one a couple of weeks ago and it makes all the competition look feeble by comparison.
I can't disagree with most of the reliability comments though. They do go wrong, though not nearly as badly as they used to. The 80's and 90's were the worst years. Things have improved a lot, but not nearly enough.
Nothing in the large 4x4 market offers nearly the luxury of RR. Have you seen the interior? It's in a whole different league to BMW, Merc etc. Very close to Rolls Royce in terms of quality and feel. A BMW X5 for instance is a bland plastic fest next to RR.
And nothing is better off road than a Range Rover. It is the best luxury 4x4 in the world by a long distance. A land Cruiser is great off road but to describe it as a luxury vehicle is just silly. It is an agricultural workhorse with leather seats.
Especially now the new model RR has come along. I drove one a couple of weeks ago and it makes all the competition look feeble by comparison.
I can't disagree with most of the reliability comments though. They do go wrong, though not nearly as badly as they used to. The 80's and 90's were the worst years. Things have improved a lot, but not nearly enough.
Wonderful ... the very thought that you can be stranded with a vehicle that doesn't perform it's primary function of transportation but at least you'll be cosseted and comforted by all the RollsRoyce quality leather and feel to make you all better while calling on your mobile communications for assistance.
Given the very short distances off road that present in England from the roads, such an incident is likely to be of no great impact. And many Range Rover drivers in the USA will never really be "off-road" in locales like Long Island in normal use.
But for much of the USA, especially here in the Western/Rocky Mountain areas, it is truly remote, some distance away from pavement, and without mobile phone service. And that's where the Range Rover true character shines ... all that luxury going nowhere when it breaks down.
For that matter, we've had days when the Range Rovers could not keep up off-road with our old G280E on wet slick stuff on hillsides or in slick mud, nor with the Hummers or the mundane domestic USA SUV's. I sold a G300D to a friend in upstate New York who used it for hunting and fishing on a 50,000 acre tract of private land ... his neighbors with Range Rovers laughed at the G-wagen because it was the epitome of "slow" on dry pavement when he went to town. They quit laughing when he was able to get into his fishing cabin during mud season and they couldn't with their vaunted luxury Range Rovers. Similarly, a friend in Pecos NM could access his ranch with old Dodge Power Wagons and nothing else when it was wet on the access road (slick clay soil) until he bought a G280E, and also a Hummer; neither vehicle has required anything except routine servicing and consumables since they were purchased. He's tossed the keys to these vehicles to everybody that has been accessing the ranch, so they've been driven by a wide range of skillsets ... and everybody has been able to make it up to the main house even in adverse conditions.
I compare that level of transportation performance to the frequent breakdowns/failures I've seen on Range Rover vehicles, even before they were taken off-road or the ones I've seen that were still on MSO's, never sold brand new ... that needed to be towed. All that luxury interior and finish and trim is totally useless trappings when and if the vehicle is not moving, although I'll agree it looks impressive. About as good as a Gold President with Pave diamonds and a gold nugget wristband that can't keep better time than a minute/day accuracy ... nice to look at, functionally defective ....
Wonderful ... the very thought that you can be stranded with a vehicle that doesn't perform it's primary function of transportation but at least you'll be cosseted and comforted by all the RollsRoyce quality leather and feel to make you all better while calling on your mobile communications for assistance.
Given the very short distances off road that present in England from the roads, such an incident is likely to be of no great impact. And many Range Rover drivers in the USA will never really be "off-road" in locales like Long Island in normal use.
But for much of the USA, especially here in the Western/Rocky Mountain areas, it is truly remote, some distance away from pavement, and without mobile phone service. And that's where the Range Rover true character shines ... all that luxury going nowhere when it breaks down.
For that matter, we've had days when the Range Rovers could not keep up off-road with our old G280E on wet slick stuff on hillsides or in slick mud, nor with the Hummers or the mundane domestic USA SUV's. I sold a G300D to a friend in upstate New York who used it for hunting and fishing on a 50,000 acre tract of private land ... his neighbors with Range Rovers laughed at the G-wagen because it was the epitome of "slow" on dry pavement when he went to town. They quit laughing when he was able to get into his fishing cabin during mud season and they couldn't with their vaunted luxury Range Rovers. Similarly, a friend in Pecos NM could access his ranch with old Dodge Power Wagons and nothing else when it was wet on the access road (slick clay soil) until he bought a G280E, and also a Hummer; neither vehicle has required anything except routine servicing and consumables since they were purchased. He's tossed the keys to these vehicles to everybody that has been accessing the ranch, so they've been driven by a wide range of skillsets ... and everybody has been able to make it up to the main house even in adverse conditions.
I compare that level of transportation performance to the frequent breakdowns/failures I've seen on Range Rover vehicles, even before they were taken off-road or the ones I've seen that were still on MSO's, never sold brand new ... that needed to be towed. All that luxury interior and finish and trim is totally useless trappings when and if the vehicle is not moving, although I'll agree it looks impressive. About as good as a Gold President with Pave diamonds and a gold nugget wristband that can't keep better time than a minute/day accuracy ... nice to look at, functionally defective ....
I assume the Hummers were H 1's because the other models are a joke.
For that matter, we've had days when the Range Rovers could not keep up off-road with our old G280E on wet slick stuff on hillsides or in slick mud, nor with the Hummers or the mundane domestic USA SUV's. I sold a G300D to a friend in upstate New York who used it for hunting and fishing on a 50,000 acre tract of private land ... his neighbors with Range Rovers laughed at the G-wagen because it was the epitome of "slow" on dry pavement when he went to town. They quit laughing when he was able to get into his fishing cabin during mud season and they couldn't with their vaunted luxury Range Rovers. Similarly, a friend in Pecos NM could access his ranch with old Dodge Power Wagons and nothing else when it was wet on the access road (slick clay soil) until he bought a G280E, and also a Hummer; neither vehicle has required anything except routine servicing and consumables since they were purchased. He's tossed the keys to these vehicles to everybody that has been accessing the ranch, so they've been driven by a wide range of skillsets ... and everybody has been able to make it up to the main house even in adverse conditions.
I compare that level of transportation performance to the frequent breakdowns/failures I've seen on Range Rover vehicles, even before they were taken off-road or the ones I've seen that were still on MSO's, never sold brand new ... that needed to be towed. All that luxury interior and finish and trim is totally useless trappings when and if the vehicle is not moving, although I'll agree it looks impressive. About as good as a Gold President with Pave diamonds and a gold nugget wristband that can't keep better time than a minute/day accuracy ... nice to look at, functionally defective ....
You're trying to compare apples with oranges here.
The RR is not a G wagen. The LR Defender is a G Wagen competitor.
The RR competes with Porsche Cayennes and Merc GL's and BMW X5's and is massively better off road than any of them whilst still being a better luxury car on road.
If you just want to go as far off road as possible then buy a Defender. Nobody buys a RR just to go off road. They're bought to be a luxury car with off road ability, and for that role they are peerless.
Reliability of more recent examples is far better than popular myth would tell you, but as I already said they still need to be better.
You're trying to compare apples with oranges here.
(snip)
Reliability of more recent examples is far better than popular myth would tell you, but as I already said they still need to be better.
Not at all.
The first and foremost, primary function of these off-road vehicles is transportation.
Putting lipstick on it doesn't address the failure of them to fulfill that primary function, and that's what Range Rover has done. They're simply conspicuous consumption at it's worst, all image ...
RE: "reliability". Sorry, Stewart, but I'm in the industry and I'm not reporting "myths" or "rumours" that I heard about 2nd, 3rd, or even further removed from the source. I'm posting on these pages the actual experiences that I've encountered with a sizable number of the products from Range Rover. They simply don't measure up to the standards of reliability offered by other manufacturers ... even if their products aren't as luxurious as the Range Rover Sport when sitting parked on a showroom floor. I call on more shops in a week and see what work is ongoing than most people will see in a lifetime, and my territory is the Rocky Mountain West. Not some country club parking lot in an upscale neighborhood where bling and conspicuous consumption is the hallmark of the neighborhood and the vehicles rarely see true "off-road" driving.
As well, I call upon a number of shops that specialize in hobby fabrication of serious off-road racing or pleasure vehicles; some are inexpensive cobbled together vehicle, some are $500K toys that get seriously raced. Most of them build custom frames and use powertrain and components from other vehicles to assemble a competitive package; you'll see engines, transmissions, differentials, suspension items from numerous manufacturers, and performance/reliability is paramount over unit cost. You know the single manufacturer's items you'll never see in this shops? Range Rover components. In 30+ years of seeing every possible configuration and dream of maximum off-road desert racing, hill climbing, back-country exploring ... I've never ever seen a single component from a Range Rover used for this purpose. If they were so damn good, the shops would be buying these components and putting them to use, and there'd be tuners and aftermarket fabricators cranking out stuff to take advantage of these components ... there aren't any, because the components aren't good enough to base using them or improve them for maximum performance with reliability.
Even Chevy and Ford get tricked out with some very impressive performance mods that will reliably blow the doors off a Range Rover component. And much as I don't particularly care for them, even a Cadillac Escalade will perform adequately with sufficient luxury features on adverse road conditions.
The mythology that presents in this thread is your imagination that Range Rover is a competitive vehicle in our markets here. The only place these things get serious consideration is on the basis of "bling" and perceived "luxury" for the conspicuous consumption crowd. They don't measure up at all when it comes to reliable on-road or off-road performance. Such is the reporting of owners and folk who have leased these vehicles here, as mentioned on the pages. Be as defensive as you want about your pride and joy, it's a POS ... clothed in some very nice threads.
My neighbor recently traded his wife's RX400h for a new LR4. Me and my wife have a running bet on when the flatbed will be appearing at their house.
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