Hi my sweetheart bought a 2012 LR4 without me present. she has had like 4 previous Land rovers. It had around 80K miles. Within 15 days of owning it she got a low coolant light. She took it to the Land rover dealer in Greensboro NC to have the coolant topped off. Even though she bought a platinum warranty they told her she had a bad coolant line and it would cost $800 to fix, and that it was not covered under the warranty. So she had the line replaced, but apparently there was more wrong. So thinking the car was fixed we took it on vacation. We drove over 200 miles then the low coolant light came on a second time. In addition to having a bad coolant line it had a blown head gasket. Who ever traded it in had over heated the engine. These cars have a major design flaw with this plastic coolant line. After time the plastic deteriorates and leaks the coolant out at the seals. The 2nd major design flaw is when the coolant leaks to low the temperature gauge still reads normal. So suspecting the car had a blown head gasket I made sure the reservoir was full of coolant and tried driving the car back home keeping an eye on the temperature gauge. Needless to say the engine started pinging then started to clack. Then the reduced engine perfofmance light came on and it started to knock so I pulled over and shut off the engine. The whole time my temp gauge read normal. I opened the hood and I could feel the heat of the engine plus there was a strong smell of gasoline from the fuel rail seals failing and spuing gas all over the engine. We were lucky the car didn't burst into flames!!!! Of course the car dealership refuses to do anything about it and they want $20k to fix the engine. We wrote Land rover, but they will not do anything either!! So beware of buying a used Land rover. My profession is electrical engineering and I have rebuilt several gasoline engines. I am a mechanic for a hobby. It is really a shame that Land rover does not back up their products and will not admit when they have a terrible design flaw.

 

Sorry to hear about your issues.

Firstly I don't think you're describing a design flaw here - every manufacturer in the world uses plastic and rubber on cooling system lines. They have to be checked and maintained. Unfortunately it sounds like the previous owner did not - and you did not check before buying. So someone unloaded their issues on you

Note that low coolant in the reservoir does not mean hot engine. You keep mentioning that the engine temp wasn't showing as hot. But you can have a leak that means reservoir is low but the cooling system still has fluid at normal temp. And you can also lose the fluid at which point the temp light won't come on as their is no fluid for the temp probe to measure. That's why it has a low coolant warning

Unfortunately people interpret low coolant as 'I had better top it off'. Don't! It means there is potentially a real issue and that's your one warning before you drive with no coolant and kill the engine

Did you buy the car from a LR dealer? If so absolutely escalate to jLR if this is within 15 days of buying it was clearly bad - whether they know it or not
If you didn't buy from a LR dealer then I'm not sure what you expect for them to do with a 7 year old car way out of warranty that they didn't sell you

Why isn't the Platinum protection paying??

 

There is just so much wrong here... I can't even write everything down.
Bottom line is you overheated the engine (no way it makes it 200 miles with a preexisting condition).
The 5.0 V8 is very sensitive to being overheated, and when it happens the engine is junk. It usually involves new/rebuilt head, and possible a new block.
Aftermarket extended warranties do not cover wear and tear parts ( soft coolant hoses and lines fall under this)
We had similar problems with our BMW and Mercedes, it is not unique to Land Rover.

Sucks you bought a LR4 that was poorly maintained, and are now paying the price for it.
If they are maintained properly, they are truly great vehicles.

 

Curious. What color coolant was in it and what color did you add?