This post is in response to comments of a negative nature about the reliability of the Discovery. Please follow the time line below.

1970: Bought a new Plymouth Roadrunner, within days all of the transmission fluid had leaked out from a drain plug which had been cross-threaded during assembly. Reliable ?
1973: Bought a new Ford Gran Torino Sport, while in warranty the plug wires went bad, it took forever to get those replaced "in warranty." Never left me stranded but caused a few plugs to foul out very quickly, causing miss-fires.
1980: Bought a new Mazda GLC. I took a trip from Alabama to California that first year and a nut vibrated off. This would have standed me, but I a socket set with me and found "non-essential" nut elsewhere on the car as a replacement for the lost nut. Reliable ?
1987:Bought a new Mazda pickup, never had any trouble what-so-ever, sold it in 2003 when I bought '03 Disco. More about that later.
1989: Bought a new Buick LaSabre, the ignition computer would quit going down the road, just as if you had turned the switch off. In warranty! Reliable ?
2002: Bought a new Honda Accord for my wife, she got HER money's worth. No problems. Paid for now and still no problems.
2003: Bought a new Discovery, the dealer did all the mainenance and service, you all know about the complimentary service during the warranty.Never had any problems. Now with 50000 miles the ABS/HDC/TC lights come on a lot, and the gas guage reads less than I actually have in the tank. Reliable? It is still drivable, wish the problems did not exist, may be expensive to fix.

The point of this post is to stress the potential for problems in ANY vehicle. You can see the above vehicles represent a good cross section of vehicles on the road. I bought a few "used vehicles" during this time frame, usually no problems occured with any of these.The "bugs" had already been discovered, I guess. Best wishes to all those planning to make a new purchase, regardless of make.

 

Hey Tom... Thanks for the insight!

I think we all can understand that each vehicle may or may not have problems.. The only thing that people need to understand is that this truck is a foreign vehicle. Not only that, but normal vehicles are run on one or two computers.... This one is run on 32... which allows it to do the amazing things that it does.

Keep that in mind and always remember to keep your truck as maintained as possible...

Happy Rovering!

John-Robert

 

I had a '97 Toyota Tacoma that I bought new and proceeded to drive for 143,000 miles. It went from well inside the Arctic Circle all the way to Vera Cruz, Mexico and a million points in between. Total repairs in the 7 years I owned it barely tipped $1600 and some of that was my fault. When I sold it, the value was still pretty impressive.

My '02 Disco II cost me $4000 in the first 2 months of ownership.

Sure, some vehicles are more reliable than others, but if you're point is to say LRs are just as reliable as the next truck out there....you're crazed.

 

Same here, I've owned 2 Jeep YJs,1987 and 1990, traded the 2nd YJ in 1996 for a Cherokee XJ, and that XJ for my 1999 TJ that I,ve modified and still own.Bought this discovery on December 28th 2006, and have spent much more in repairs in the last 2 1/2 monthsthan all my Jeeps combined. And the guy from which I bought the vehicle had had the maintenance exactlyasprescribed by the owner's manual.

Don't get me wrong. I knew I was not buying a 4runner, and this Discovery can thank god it has the prestige, rareness and looks that it has. Cause it would have been set on fire or driven in a river only a few weeks after purchase. But Damn I love it

 

Yup I agree. Land Rover has among the worst reliability ratings of all makes. They arenear the bottom of the list. That's just the facts, not any opinion. Do some research and you'll see. They're poorly engineered, but I still like em because they are such a pleasure to actually drive.

 

rover-lover, where are you located?

 

I agree that no vehicle will be free from mechanical issues......but that's stating the obvious.

What I don't agree with is the "cross section" comparison you're making. You're comparing Rover's reliablity/quality to Fords, Buicks, Mazdas, etc. Therein lies the problem......for what you pay for a Rover, there SHOULD be no comparison to vehicles that cost half as much (and half as much to repair, by the way).

My daily driver is a BMW 540 thatnow has over 240,000 miles on it. Even with that kind of mileage, the overall quality of that car remains in a completely different league than my Disco. Having said that, the original purchase prices of the two vehicles weren't that far apart.Weshould be able to compare LR's to BMW's, MB's, Lexus, etc. but here we arearguing that they're just as good as Fords and Buicks!

In yearspast, onecould argue that part of what you pay for in a Rover is an offroad capability that far exceeds those other brands. However, that's starting to apply less and less as every new Rover model is geared more towards the on-road, luxury SUV market.

 

Bogdenz,I agree with you 90%. The 10% where I don't, is that I know people with BMWs and Jaguars that I consider the same market or clientele that buy Rovers, and they have as much trouble as people with Rovers.

 

I'll go along with that Darover.....especially regarding Jags. One of the reasons I didn't throw that name into the mix is because I'd put them in the same cost vs. quality category as Rover (maybe not as much today as I would have 10 years ago.....since they're basically a Ford/Lincoln these days).

As far as BMW goes, a lot of my good fortune maybe credited to having the4.4 V8rather thanBMW's signature inline 6 configuration. That V8 is probably to BMW what the 318 is/was to Mopar.....pretty bulletproof.

 

Alot of those "reliability checks" that you find are very inaccurate, they take the percentage of cars bought and figure out home many times they are serviced for problems from collecting data at garages and from carfax. This would work for most manufacturers but, for luxury/rare cars those numbers are automatically higher because there are much less Land Rovers than say a Toyota. Its the same reason Mercedes has such a bad reputation. Now don't get me wrong, Land Rovers do have there problems but some of those list aren't really fair being compared to little Japanese Companies!! I haven't had any problems with mine yet, maybe I'm lucky, hopefully my luck will continue!