This is good advice.
I do like my Disco 1,, but you never know how the last person took care of it.

 

Yeah very true. I had to drop about $1,200 on "first few months" break downs. Most people will tell you that when people who have these trucks know they might sell it soon, they stop doing the VERY important maintanence and by the time its in the new buyer's hands, it need a little rehab. Since then my truck has been pretty much flawless, the mass air flow censor went out but it was easy to replace. Depending on where you are going to school and how far it is from home (aka a back up car) you might want to look into these things. Dont get me wrong I LOVE my disco but I dont want to talk it up to much and have you stuck somewhere at college with no truck to drive. Now if you think maintainence wont be a problem, GO FOR IT! Like i said once you get it rehabed the chance of a break down goes wayyy down! But all in all, it has been 9 months since rehabing my disco and since then its been great! Now its up to you!

PS- I like the 2001 the best. Keep us posted on what you decide.

 

Seth-My '97 with 171k on the clock has never let me down. We have put 20k on it since April of '07, not once did it not do what was asked of it.
Even deep in the woods with no cell signal and the wife and kids on a hot August day and the a/c cranking away as we made our own trail, for over three hours we crept along basically lost in the woods because the trail had disappeared and the only way yo turn around was to back up three miles.
So I just got out the machete and my son and I cleared paths when we needed to.
So moral of the story, I wouldnt take my wife and kids into the woods if I didnt think that our trk was going to let us down.
Drive several, maybe spend less money but put more into to get it up to par.

 

That 97 with low miles would be nice..but that price seems a bit steep..at least around here.

 

sent you a PM. call me if you have any questions. The 97 is a rip off....

 

Sweet! I'm not the only one who thought so.

 

I'll tell you that there really is no substitute. nothing else looks like a discovery and it really stands out. I love mine and while there are more reliable suv's like a 4 runner i wouldsnt trade my discovery for anything else. be forewarned though it can be an expensive vehicle to maintain unless you have experience as a mechanic, or mechanicaly incline, a good set of tools. if you think you can afford it go for it but if you are trying to conserve money then try a 4 runner or a pathfinder. they tend to be the most reliable and are better built than domestic suv's and arent nearly as suseptible to the electircal nightmares of Chevy/GMC or most gm products for that matter. I say find a used Rav4 toyota if you don't plan on doing any serious offroading. they hold their value well. you can always upgrade to a discovery later whenb it is financialy more feasible. Hope this helps

 

grr switching from a laptop to desktop keyboard is making me look illiterate. One thing about the disco you will love is the offroad capability and how solid it feels compared to other suv's. good luck

 

Thanks for all the great comments! I've been looking around, and I ran across this one. This one is close enough that I could go take a look. It's a little higher than I had planned, but it seems to be a good deal...maybe thinking it might be worth the extra $. This is a fairly well known dealership in the Oklahoma City area. Does this seem to be a pretty good deal?

2003 Disco - 86,000 Miles

 

Since you asked...in my opinion a Discovery (or any large SUV) is not a good choice for grad school. When I was in college I had an '82 Celica and it saved my bacon more than once from potential financial ruin by never letting me down in the lean months. It was bulletproof, cheap to run and low maintenance. That way I had money left over from my pizza delivery jobto travel to Alaska every summer, buy decent beer and take my girlfriend (now wife) out to dinner.

Grad school is a long haul. Get something cheap, reliable and good on gas, and buy the nicest Land Rover you can find when you graduate and land the big paycheck.

Cheers,
Dave