Did not expect P300 to be so lovely on the road, but it was. Smooth power delivery. Not a whole lot of noise. The car on the lot was a bit too much pushing $70K and not in the color that I liked. I'll do a custom build for < $60K and place the order soon. Just out of curiosity, has anyone reported any issues with engine, transmission on P300?

 

Not to my knowledge ... and I am paying close attention.

Both the ZF transmission and the JLR Ingenium motor technology have 5+ years of experience -- with no major crisis to note. That contributed to me deciding to buy a 2020 model.

The engine, transmission, 4WD drive train, off-road electronics and vehicle geometry combination, (along with an acceptable feeling seat and ride) are the sole reasons I bought the vehicle -- 110 S P300. The engine and transmission matching in all modes and situations has been impeccable, SO FAR.

I have never owned an automatic transmission, petrol-powered vehicle with no gaps in its management of power & torque somewhere in the performance envelope (which I had to manage my driving around), before this one.

 

This failure of a p300 was notably discussed in a lot of circles:

 

Yes, that is true. I had put that one out of my mind, due to its nature of being treated as a catastrophic Dead on Arrival situation, which emerged during the first few hours of use. The cause is hopefully not chronic.

Possibly this was from a mfg. defect of the engine or a component, but no one one knows? It was clearly decisive, and hopefully not in a provisional area fundamental to the design (hopefully), as JLR would not even attempt to fix it and has not yet seen fit to do a recall or fix campaign.

I and others, I suppose, hope it is a one-off fluke, certainly. I am at almost 4000 miles now, as are others --- no issue yet.

We shall see. I received an app-driven system analyzer for Christmas and am looking forward to charting what is available from the drive train sensors over time. I have not yet gotten to that yet !

 

To be fair, I think that was an anomaly. It was the first car that had the issue. Second was the dealerships fault for not knowing how to install the winch and ruining that vehicle (RIP). Third seems to be ok with exception of that sensor issue that others have mentioned here. Curious if that issue was widespread or only affected a few vehicles and if it's been remedied for the 21MY.

 

Issue has been resolved for MY21. I believe the MY20 fix was to relocate the sensor and a zip tie.

 

I have a P300 and love it, and I am approaching 2k without a problem. I am also in the land of statistics and the TFL video reminds me of the bell curve. TFL issue is on the fat end of the curve, most likely a limited number of cases will occur. The problem is everyone focuses on one case and forgets about the 97.5% of the people will never have an issue like TFL.

 

Agree with you and possibly just bad luck for JLR that it was TFL that got the defender with a bad engine. Had they got p300 defender for example, there are no other notable stories of p300 issues I am aware of. There is probably someone out there with a p400 that had an issue and we just dont know about it.

What I would say was encouraging is that JLR gave them a new defender. When the dealer messed up the winch install on that second p300 defender they got upgraded for free to a p400. Probably worth their inconvenience. Had JLR bailed on them and they were still trying to fix the original p300, I think that would have been a more concerning story.

 

Re-releasing the Defender was an uphill battle from the beginning. For JLR they had to create something just as, if not more than, capable which I believe they achieved. Then came launch and people (old defender owners and old defender wannabe owners) took disgust at the look which I think is fair. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Then came this random crowd talking about farmers not being able to toss sheep in the back (apparently this is some other sport the english invented which I'm sure another country will be better at soon).

So yea, people were going to nitpick and the slightest issue would be blown up into some massive case. And by chance, one bad apple got in the hands of a review team that has a lot of followers looking for an issue and they hit the jackpot. Most people I've talked to with a Defender on here seem to have had few issues.

The rest are out driving...

 

It would have been nice if it was less luxury and more utilitarian and priced $20k less. From a price perspective I dont think its competing with the new bronco, or the wrangler. The defender is significantly more expensive. From that perspective it fits into the prior discovery line although I dont think they were quite as expensive as the defender either ?