On 2005-06-02, Steve Firth <%steve%@malloc.co.uk> wrote:
> Hmm, an inaccurate portrayal of my opinion there. I don't hate
> Landies, I've owned enough of them. However I don't have my head in
> the sand,
Sure but don't forget that while you've had hassles with Landies,
others certainly haven't, what I find amusing about your posts is that
you rip into landies at the earliest opportunity based on your own bad
experiences. I've owned my 110 for about 6 years now and the only
trouble I've ever had has been down to my own stupidity, driving like
an absolute idiot on off-road courses in my early days, or missing
service intervals while washing lubrication off by wading through
watery mud (that kills the UJs and blocks the rad).
It's been a brilliant, reliable car, which is more than can be said
for my last two Audis and my Lotus. The Audis and the Lotus have
never had to go through water up to my waist in the cab, bounce off
trees, rock crawl, tow each other around on large trailers etc. The
landy has had the toughest life of all my cars and it's the one that's
never complained and has cost me the least by far to maintain.
Service costs are higher than the Audi but you'd expect that, however
the landy has cost me less to run over a year because it's not broken
down, whereas the audi has.
In the Lotus's defence it's the oldest of the cars ('89) and has had 6
nasty owners, but the Audis have no excuse, they've been beaten by a
landy! And the landy doesn't even leak oil!
Yes landies have a bad reputation, but I think more than a fair old
chunk of that is down to people wanting to knock the big name in the
same way that people will batter on about how crap Ferrari are, any
name that sticks out in a field gets a kicking from people, often
without justification.
Having said that, I think the Range Rover was **** from the end of the
classic Range Rover range up until just before the current one, they
made them too complicated and skimped on cheap but vital items like
proper electrical connectors, so the gadgets stop working after a
while.
> three years of Ford 4x4 ownership has cost me less than a single
> year of Land Rover ownership. For a working vehicle, that difference
> is significant.
There's not many 4x4 brands that have proven themselves in the field
as well as Land Rover, it's why there's so many of them on our roads
today. Defenders are all over the place, with good reason.
--
For every expert, there is an equal but opposite expert
