Firstly, it depends on it's past historyand what it was used for and how well it was serviced. Mine has been very reliable until recently when a bearing failed in the transferbox. Mine has done 165,000 miles, and most of those were leading a hard life, but was well maintained. We choose a defender because it is easier to fix compared to modern cars, and have to say, even when the bearing failed, I was still able to drive it to a place I was happy to leave it.. (my office) The reality was, if I had to, I could have driven it home the 20 miles, but I wanted to minimise the damage done to the transferbox, which was in the end just the bearing.
Expensive to fix, well, depends what breaks, and depends on the standard you wish to have the vehicle in. Show room standard is expensive to maintain, the bodywork on mine is covered in dents, but I don't want to take them out, as it is part of it's special charm. The dents have all come about from off roading anyway, (most before I got it) The thing is, as it is easy to work on, most people tend to do their own maintenance and repairs.
Would I recommend it as a full time car, well we have used it as our full time car, and my wife loves driving it, but it is a personal thing, and you may enjoy driving it or you may not. We both enjoy it and have used it to travel around europe, so have done some long trips, with driving for over 24 hours in one go. It is good around town too, quite nippy, and people tend not to argue with you when they see that large steel bumper.
land rover defender
