lol, the days of "rust buckets" on the road are distant memories. Mind you rust issues have "changed" a bit - these days "non-visible" rust seems more prevalent. Taking a prime example of a rust suffering car, the D1, they are likely to be terminated by rust but you can't see it because its in the chassis or places like where the B pillar meets the roof.
It does also seem impossible that cars used to be considered end-of-life at 100K miles, that is often cranked up in just a few years these days and even if its taken a while, the cars are still "young". They may need some maintenance, like belts, viscous couplings or little O rings, but they're good-as
I agree that "all that is good, is not necessarily non-British". My particular pet hate is people selling their Freelanders with the primary selling point being that it has a BMW engine! Yeh, the engines are OK, but I strongly feel they are no better than my British oil burner - just different characteristics. If (Land) Rover hadn't got itself into such a pickle and been passed onto BMW ownership, I'm sure the G Series or 'real' TD4 sister to the TD5 would have been better engines. The current crop of Ingenium engines are superb.
I really do not know what to make of the KV6 though. I know Nodge and Hippo swear by them, and I respect their views, but I keep coming back to this post....
https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rover/heeeeelp-overheating.302603/#post-3781092
It seems obvious from that list that KV6's die and die young - often/usually not even making the good old 100K miles. Maybe there's something in the KV6 cooling system that's prone to failure but is an easy fix - bit like the humble little O ring in a TD4 fuel pump that's an easy fix, but I bet has seen the very premature death of a lot of TD4 Freelanders.