I was perusing the web and dropped in on this thread .................

NIGHTMARE TD5, Land Rover Discovery Revies and Report, Land Rover Discovery Recall

In most cases the faults are obviously lack of maintenance and care where people buy old D2's possibly owned multiple times, bought them cheao ......... so they received what they paid for and often unaware of the signs and symptoms of possible failures. Many buy them after 10+ years because they are cheap and riddled with faults from lack of expert maintenance, others buy them 'cos they think they are cool when a regular car will suffice and the worst buy them because the paintwork was shiny 9 out of 10 often deserve what they bought in blind stupidity, I feel sorry for them but cannot sympathise too much.

 

I love my Disco but realistically they are very unreliable. Would I sell mine?.. NO!!!! but it doesn't make blind to the fact they are not what they used to be (a trustworthy work horse), Disco's have a reputation and they have earn it, perhaps out of lack of owner(s) negligence in the maintenance or maybe lack of understanding about the complex design of the vehicle by incompetent mechanics and let's don't forget the irresponsible way the manufacturer put it together. If you the love we have for them, yes it's a great vehicle but for those that pay for servicing their trucks it have been(remember new engines seizing on the dealers parking lots before they could sell them), it is presently and remain a piece crap.
Please not flaming because I am committed to mine for the long haul ......
Disco's are the same way I like my women, stylish, luxury, can take them any where, different, give you an awesome ride and full of issues...LMAO

 

But without them, life would not be near as fun!

 

I took stock of my Land Rovers this weekend.
Between the 3 cars I have 490,000 miles.
I don't think that I could call any of these vehicles unreliable. All problems with my '04 D2 to date have been from botched/half *** repair jobs. My RRC has 250,000 miles on the original engine.
In contrast, my purchased new 2001 Supercharged Nissan Frontier overheated in the second year of ownership and ate front brakes. I replaced it with a bought new '03 H2 that had problems with the traction control unit (WABCO same as a D2), sunroof and air suspension (sound familiar?) all within the first 3 years of ownership.

I think that any vehicle with sufficient levels of complexity in its design is going to require greater amounts of TLC to keep them serviceable. I wouldn't equate that to unreliable though.

 

I couldn't agree more, as a 45 year LR owner and heavy user I never even experienced many of the claimed problems but again I look after my trucks meticulously. My TD5 is 12 years old with 130K miles and has been relatively trouble free.