Been monitoring the Internet nationwide (US) for an under 100k miles LR3. Wanted the forum's perspective on a couple things:

• Practicality of using this car as a daily driver (about 1,000 miles a month mainly highway) with the occasional road trip and offroading
• Purchasing advise: have found several, but have been picky (clean Carfax, interior in good shape, ideally documented service records). Prices seem to be all over the place and the couple that seem to be better candidates have sold fairly quickly. Found another one tonight from a place that "specializes in Land Rovers", so would like to get people's take on it and ideally see if the seller is known here (given they say they are specialists). https://www.marquismotorcars.com/aut...r-ma/49617020/

Thanks!

 

I'm pretty new to the LR3 world, so take my perspective with a grain of salt. It looks very nice, and the interior is in great shape. It's certainly low mileage. But without seeing its service records it's really hard to tell where it falls in the spectrum. I'd honestly have a hard time paying that price, even for the low mileage. Low miles doesn't necessarily mean it's mechanically more sound. Sometimes higher miles might mean some of the parts prone to failure have already been run through and replaced. So to me it feels pretty overpriced.

I just picked up a 2008 with 138k miles with pretty good service records. The interior isn't in as great of shape, but it's not bad by any means. I paid about half of what that is listed at, and I felt it was still a little high, but inventory around where I live consisted of two other options at the time. And I'm somewhat impulsive, plus they were giving me more for my trade than I paid (Wrangler).

I'm also not a big fan of places that are trying to charge a premium for something but then stuff fairly cheap tires on to it. Perhaps that's what the previous owner had on there, but at that price, to me, it raises an eyebrow a bit. But I might be in the minority and/or weird about stuff like that.

 

It's a nice looking car, but you can't tell much more about it.
EDIT: The dash looks like it's cracked up (which is sadly quite common) and they've tried to cover it up with something. Also, if all the tires are like the one in the picture, the first thing the new owner needs is four new ones. On a car at that price I'd expect brand new tires not worn out ones.


It is, in my view, pretty very expensive. I'm in the process of looking to move from my D3 to a D4, so I know how you feel. I've been looking for months but am chasing a very specific set of options that seem annoyingly rare. I'm in no rush; cars pop up and they go quickly for sure, but I still haven't seen anything that makes me want to get on a plane to go see it (armed with my IID tool. On the IID tool, if you don't have one, you should really think about getting now as it will help with your inspection of a prospective purchase in that you can read the faults before and after a decent test drive - this is very important on these vehicles.

To your general questions, I've had Discovery 3 and 4s (LR3s and 4s in US terminology) for 14 years, mostly the UK diesel 2.7 and 3.0L turbo charged variants, but I've had a V8 for 5 years since being posted to the US and I love it. We use it as one of two daily drivers and it does around 15K per year. It does short runs and very long runs. I haven't off-roaded this vehicle, but I've offroaded plenty of Discoverys and Defenders and the Discovery is extremely capable even without fancy tires and mods.

Patience, and buy the best you can afford. History is a must in my view, but not necessarily LR History. Just a history of what's been done. Read this forum and disco3.co.uk (which is a very active forum albeit that there are very few V8 owners on it as the car was barely sold in the UK (~900 units). The V8 is bullet proof if cared for. Air suspension issues on vehicles this age crop up, but are solvable. The vehicles are generally easy to DIY maintain (IID tool is a must!). Look out for rust (some surface rust is expected). Look out for leaks, noisy engines, and of course any accident damage. There's quite a lot of tech on these vehicles, so make sure everything works. There's a buying checklist here but there's a longer one on the UK site.

Good luck.

 

Favorite color, but that price is wicked high. Should be half, especially for an SE trim package.

My 2006 LR3 is a daily driver but I also take it some pretty sketchy places, even on 3,000+ mile trips across country. To date it has never left me down. I have had some maintenance items that were "major" but not unexpected. Starter and front wheel hubs.

 

$17k for a 4 owner Land Rover that's 12 years old is crazy to me. Especially with that varied service history.

I bought my 1-owner LR3 for $10k less from the Land Rover dealership it was purchase at when new. Had 117k miles on it when I got it a little under a year ago.

 

That price is way too high, unless they are including some kind of amazing bumper-to-bumper warranty.

Find a local, private sale. Don't give up.

 

Yeah, completely overpriced. Offer them $5000 less. This will help you pay for all of the stuff that will need to be fixed in 10,000 miles

 

I spent about half of this for an identical truck with 90k after 6-8 weeks of searching. The only service history I had was the carfax and even though i talked to a 4x4 shop that had serviced it recently and I ended up having to spend 6k to service the entire drivetrain and replace a number of defective items. The bulk of the $ was swapping the airbags for coils and replacing the instrument pack, the latter of which is absurd in my opinion because this is something that should never fail and seems to happen on these trucks with regularity. I missed out on several because the seller wouldn't hold it long enough for a ppi and I had to roll the dice without doing a proper inspection because there was just no inventory. However, I really like the truck and the indy shop where I took it had good things to say about LR3s overall.

In my search for these my observation is that prices increased on average of 10-25% over the summer; not sure if it was lack of inventory or just a spike in demand for adventure type vehicles from people stuck inside with Corona. Similar trucks that were fully serviced and had a good history were selling in the 10-12k range and would sell very quickly, whereas trucks at used car dealerships with no history would sell for 7-9k and sit for a bit longer.

 

Was the original sticker price of that really near 70k? That age and an SE make me feel the price is a bit high. Looks to be in good shape. What would you typically gain with the HSE?

 

I don't know that I can offer much more advice than what you've been told already, all of which is spot on.

I second the idea that if you are serious about buying you should get an IIDTool and take it with you when you look at candidate LR3s. I did that when I bought my wife's 2006, but I had the benefit of already having owned the IIDTool (and another LR3). I would recommend not only getting any service history, but taking a hard look at it and putting things through their paces like the EAS and bushings and such....put your hand on the passenger floorboard and see if it's wet, that kind of stuff. Look under the hood for evidence of burnt off coolant or oil. Of course look under it for any leaks.

Between those things, running a code check with your GAP tool and looking for "low key upgrades" like the front diff breather valve, you can learn a lot about the vehicle and how it was cared for. Also, at this mileage, it's gonna be due for some fairly major things like spark plugs and (I think) injectors cleaned? Also the tranny should get at least a fluid flush at 100k. That said it might be better to find one with ~105k that had all that stuff done already.