Interesting perspective. I can definitely see someone not caring about smaller issues in a $20-30k car, opposed to a $100k car. Also, the clientele for LRs are more demanding/annoying and will be very picky about smaller issues(not saying that's a bad thing when spending so much).

 

Kia is most reliable? This is how I know these rankings are a joke.

 

I suspect it's an intersection of very picky and demanding clients who are coming from Mercedes / Lexus / Audi / Volvo etc. and a lack of attention to detail by JLR which is probably an order of magnitude smaller than its competitors. Add in the need to excel in design and off-road ability which means that there's not as much time and budget for boring things like process improvement, QA, process engineering etc.

Having said which, every single manufacturer with an above average score is because they are (in my humble opinion) making boring, staid, unexciting vehicles. In most cases they are appliances for people who don't care about anything except reliability. I can't think of a single vehicle from any one of them I'd drive by choice.

 

​​​​​

https://www.hotcars.com/why-jd-power...lete-nonsense/

 

On the U.K. review forums such as Trustpilot and the dealer reviews there's a lot of unrealistic complaints from people who have scrutinised their vehicle and picked out insignificant defects.
Then they've ranted to the dealer, expecting instant rectification of issues such as a 1mm gap in the plastic wheel arch trim or a tiny imperfection on a seat.

There are also genuine complaints of course, and a lot of the issues stem from the seeming inability of dealers to rectify faults.

l had similar issues with Alfa Romeo some years ago.
The car wasn't without issues but the dealer's total incompetence made it much worse, and ruined the brand reputation in the U.K.

 

I understand this is a quick extract for our interest, but the absence of information is hurting my head.

I think a much better (granted harder to obtain) metric would be based on 'DpMO' - Defects per Million Opportunities (from SixSigma)
Where 'defects' are not purely complaints, but represent issues reviewed and confirmed as legitimate problems due to poor manufacture/design.
And the 'opportunities' are the number of things which could go wrong - so features / functionalities in each car, rather than assuming every car is the same.

A Range Rover with 14-way electronically adjustable seats, already has at least 12 more opportunities to fail than a Dacia with just manual slide and recline seats. DPMO mathematically levels the playing field. It would essentially compare 7 Dacias to every 1 Range Rover to cater for the difference in seat features alone.

 

Your point seems reasonable. And then Genesis took #2. Their features & tech are equal to or better than anything LR offers. How?

​​​​

 

THIS. So much this... The question should not be "how many problems happened per 100 vehicles." It should be split out into levels of problems. They should be weighted somehow. Having a head crack on one side of an engine block is not the same as "well my AC still works fine but it rattles for 1.5 seconds every time it starts up." While the latter might be annoying, it doesn't mean you can't drive it home. (And yes, some of the "problems" reported are absolutely user error.)

 

I technically had my first service "issue" and record at 26 miles on the odometer because Land Rover released a buggy software version in Nov. 2022. This prevented the completion of the PDI, and in fact, prevented all dealers nationwide from updating cars for the week. The car functioned, but the cameras were "unavailable" and no parking sensors worked. There was supposed to be a hold stop on all Defender sales, but mine slipped through the cracks and was sold to me before the remedy. Unfortunate timing, yes, but it was resolved rather quickly and was all software. It was a fun little welcome to the brand

Anyway, I'm sure dings and ticky tacky demerits like this for such a sophisticated vehicle are many compared to any Honda SE.

 

I'm not saying LR are in any way reliable(!) I'm just saying it's unhelpful to compare a car with a thousand features, with a car with no features.

I think it's fairly clear that the R&D and real world feedback for a company producing 5%-10% of the larger companies (LR vs Hyundai) is going to be much worse. LR seem to be in this painful spot where they produce a reasonable amount of cars, but nowhere near the volumes compared to the big guys. As such their profit margins and financials are really tough and budget for their R&D appears to be lacking.

I really think LR need to ally with a much larger vehicle manufacturer (BMW?), in order to improve their reliability challenges.