Originally posted by Mike Rotch
What are your opinions on the Range Rover and Land Rover Discovery?
The Range Rovers seems to be a capable on-and off-roader, but who would in their right mind take a car that price into the bush? How does it stack up to other SUV's there?
The Discovery on the other hand seems to have a stronger off-road heritage (think Camel Trophy), yet here and in the UK has a miserable reputation for reliability. Is the reliability issue the same State-side?
Yeah - reliability is assumed to be trash on Land Rover models, not because it currently is (it might be), but because it's always been like that in the past. I bought a 1996 Discovery in 2001 and it was in the shop quite a bit - but I liked it. Still, I sold it in 2002 and bought a Mercedes ML430 that made the Disco look like a Toyota pickup.
That said, I'd rather fry my face off than buy a new Discovery today - the engine is a joke, the base-model might be the most overpriced car for sale, and reliability is
questionable. They're no longer a player in the premium SUV game, but then again, this is its last year in its current form, and to be a competitor in a vehicle's last year, the vehicle has to be practically perfect.
Range Rover - I love it, personally. My only qualms about the Range Rover are that it has options (it should have everything standard for its price -
especially heated seats in such an 'off-road' vehicle) and that it's got a very weak engine. Buyers in this class increasingly want acceleration (look at the current crop - Infiniti FX45, Porsche Cayenne, BMW X5 4.4, Jeep Grand Cherokee High-Output 4.7, etc.), and it's only got 282-horsepower from its BMW 4.4 V8, which is 33-horsepower less than BMW gets from the same engine in the X5. They wanted to put a new engine in it, but I heard it would require a restyle of the front - so they're content to leave it for now. Which might be decent, since it looks so good.
And your opinions on the Freelander? Here it is really overpriced compared to its competitors. It goes for something like $35000-$38000 new, much the same a a 2WD Toyota RAV4. Cars like the Nissan X-Trail, Honda CR-V and Subaru Outback seem to offer much more practicality at that price.
I love the Freelander because it seperates the jackasses from the people who know what they're doing. Freelander puts out the least horsepower of any V6 small SUV, yet it costs the most - basically, only posers (who want to be known as 'Land Rover owners' but can't afford to) buy them. Practically every small SUV is a better buy, and - as you say - nearly everything is similarly capable (from a practicality standpoint - even if they're not as good off-road, they probably get better mileage) for less money.
In the end, the rule on Land Rover is that only posers buy them. The Land Rover name adds about twenty percent to the price of the already overpriced car. Range Rover is different - the name carries a lot of status, but no posers can afford them. Consequently, though comparsions can be made from the Range Rover to other models (Cayenne, Escalade, G-class), Range Rover buyers rarely even look at anything else.
On the small SUVs - we do get the RAV4, but only in 5-door form. We got a 3-door and 3-door convertible in the RAV4's first generation, but nobody was dumb enough to fall for that. Actually, no-one can take buyers away from the Jeep Wrangler - five or six companies have tried with competing convertible SUVs - Chevrolet Tracker, Suzuki X-90, Suzuki Sidekick, Suzuki Vitara, Kia Sportage, Toyota RAV4 at least - and each has miserably failed. Basically, it's a rookie mistake made by new entries to the small SUV field - they think they can pull off a convertible, but they can't. Usually after a few years, they figure it out and leave the segment. It's odd, too, because most of the entries have been at least as good if not better than the Wrangler, which is about fifteen years old and rides like a fifteen-year-old pickup truck.
We don't get the X-Trail, but we do get a similar (though more outdated and much worse) small SUV from Nissan called the Xterra. Nissan actually sends four SUVs our way - Pathfinder (midsize, Ford Explorer competitor - like the Patrol but slightly newer), Pathfinder Armada (huge, Chevrolet Tahoe competitor - much larger than the Pathfinder), Murano (midsize but smaller than Pathfinder - sporty), Xterra (small, Ford Escape competitor). All but the Xterra are more than competent like most Nissans, but the Xterra's in its last year, and the redesigned version looks super-promising.
