I live in South FL and bought my wife’s D5 from the local dealer a couple years back. In my case I wanted to make the Defender purchase an opportunity to get to know places I always wanted to go to and where it could come handy (pretty much all of Utah…), so I contacted and ultimately ordered it from an LR dealer in Salt Lake City (LR Lehi), back in January. The whole ordering experience all the way until taking delivery a month ago was via email and the best car buying experience I have ever had. The sales team at Lehi were on top of things from my first email and everything went flawless. I negotiated price at time of order (which some people thought did bot make any sense) and paid less than MSRP. All in all I think I hit the jackpot, not sure how things are now given demand and supply, but pretty sure my sales team at Lehi would still provide a great experience. Happy to connect you with them, just send me a PM.

 

Thank you Juancl. PM headed your way.

 

FWIW I think alot of dealers were ordering the smaller screen for the my22s since JLR was stating that the larger screens would be delayed....something changed and they were able to accommodate a lot with them but I think that might be hard to find...as of today you cant order a new one with the larger screen.

 

Just a couple of thoughts:

I have worked with 8 or 9 dealers in the Mid-west and East coast of the U.S. over the last decade or so, as I have move around and bought/sold new and CPO vehicles. A few points I have concluded:

1) smaller, older dealers provide better service -- yes, this is a generalization, but the worst experiences I have had are those large, multi-site dealers who have brand-new dealerships. I will spare you the details, but these folks are clearly not in love with the JLR experience or their buyers, but just want to make a quick buck and treat a Land Rover dealership as any other they own. Generally, these types of dealers do not seem to maintain enough skilled service capacity nor understand the loyalty of JLR buyers.

2) the dealers who are in high-intensity Land rover areas -- Connecticut (Fairfield), N.J. (Princeton), Colorado, etc. and have been in the JLR business a long-time seem to have a clearer understanding of the brand and their buyers than other dealers. They seem to be able to retain skilled and experience techs. In a nutshell, the most critical thing is to find dealers who have made and maintained a long-term commitment to JLR and vice-versa.

3) the anchor dealers for the LR experience centers (Manchester, Vermont; Asheville, NC; Carmel, CA) and the HQ in Rancho Mirage, CA have acted more tightly connected to the brand than those noted in the negative portion of point 1, above.

4) I do not think JLR Americas / U.K. understands the possibility that the Defender may actually succeed to pull in Jeep buyers or other persons who will buy the vehicle off-the-lot with the actual intention to immediately take it off-road and use it as noted in the advertisements. This is a NEW situation, if it is happening. Thus, they are not placing at dealerships off-road optimized vehicles, but again expecting those to be special ordered, as in the past.

 

TrioLROwner,

Thanks for your reply, and I completely agree with you. I have a superb independent repair facility near me for LR service and out of warranty repair. That’s theoretically great, but I’ll be stuck with the LR dealer In Rochester, NY or Albany, NY for warranty work, and will likely stick to an LR dealer for service until out of warranty.

My initial sales inquiry to Rochester did not go well. Albany was a bit better, but not so great. I’m semi-inclined to just order/buy out of state, but don’t want to be too hasty. If the local dealers’ service departments give preferential treatment to those who bought their car at the dealership, I don’t want to give that up. That said, my local Porsche Audi dealer has sold me three vehicles, and I have received no special service treatment of any kind from them through the years. I have also had 4 CPO Acura vehicles bought from the same dealership: same thing, no special treatment (although the Acura service experience has been very good through the years.)

Maybe there is little or nothing to be gained in the service department by buying the Defender from the dealer where I get it serviced. My concern is that I’ll be needing loaner cars, and don’t want to be scheduled into the distant future for every appointment, etc., so if there is a relationship to leverage, that is a factor.

Thanks for the input.

 

I placed my order back in March at Rochester (Piehler) and took delivery Wednesday but I'm completely new to the brand so how they will treat me going forward here is anyone's guess. So far the few sales guys I've dealt with have been ok. I bought four years of the prepaid sched maint, which is just two maint visits with this vehicle, I was told I'd have to bring it there for the maint to be done so take that to mean heading to the Buffalo dealer wouldn't fly for that. I'm coming from Audi, no issues every getting loaners with them, I'm used to having things done a certain way. With LR we shall see, I can tell you they have a bunch of loaners sitting on the lot when I would drive through on Sunday afternoons I would always see a fleet of loaners, so my guess is getting a loaner will not be problem here. Piehler has been around Rochester forever. I think JLR is the only brand they have right now. 40-50 years ago they were a well known dealer of Pontiacs. I was too young to know if they were any good as a dealer in those days but it's like a third generation business fwiw. I do know they had 14 on the lot at one point about 6 months ago, I mentioned it on this forum and they were down to two Defenders about two weeks later. I believe they get build slots for these if they ship out of state so when I placed a custom order mine went immediately to the head of the build queue. I think they should still be in fairly good shape build-queue wise but the chip shortages and what not are probably now the bigger issue. Good luck, wish I had more time with the dealer to say yes or no. So far I don't have much to go on, ordering and delivery went smooth enough fwiw. I would say too, this is Rochester/Buffalo area, most people buy sure-footed vehicles for snow driving. If you're really hard core to off-road this dealer may not be exactly what you're looking for. I don't know if any in this region will be. They'll tell you as much, nobody takes these things off road up here. I mean surely a few do, adirondacks, trails etc but I think you get the drift, this isn't Moab.

 

Chief65,

Thanks for the reply. I will be sending you a PM, as I’’d like to discuss the Rochester dealership. Your new Defender looks awesome!

 

By the way, has anyone purchased out of state? i.e. purchased sight unseen, salesperson unseen, dealership unseen?
Irretrievably wired money to people you've never met? Did you visit the dealership at all? Gives me pause. Such faith in human nature seldom comes my way.

 

That's me, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. August 2020, bought out of state from Land Rover of Hunt Valley in Maryland. Entire transaction by email and text. Didn't wire money though - financed 100% through Land Rover Financial (Chase). Had the car shipped to me in Texas. 12 miles on ODO. Easily one of 5 best cars I've ever owned - maybe top 3.

 

Didn't buy out of state, but the rest sounds familiar. Never met any of the sales people (some quit during the wait), never seen the interior of one before picking mine up (only saw two on the road), never test driven. Came in pre-approved and everything established beforehand. Already had insurance on it. It was the FASTEST dealership transaction - somewhere south of 40 minutes in and out. Maybe 30. My test drive was on the way home because I knew I could sell it if I hated it, but I LOVED it.