I have just bought my second p38, and bought it unseen!
I had / have a 2001 lpg bordeaux, that i have owned for 18 months now, but have kept my email alerts active on a certain car trader website. I've seen a few rangies come up that meet my criteria, but not many, so.have happily kept the 4.0
About a month and a half ago one came up that really caught my eye, it had huge milage, but a new engine, was a vogue, and many other things besides. The trouble was I was deployed with the royal navy, and not due back for a month! So a lot of emails and photos started flying back and forth, and I decided that I wanted this car. I was lucky, having owned the other rangie, I'd learnt what to check and ask, so I wrote several very detailed emails, then I was even luckier, the car was in a city I had some extended family in, so I got a cousin to make sure everything we'd talked about in the emails was correct, that way he didn't need to know much about range rovers, just check the emails!
In the end I bought it, and have had it for a few weeks now. I'm so glad I did, because it's awesome and so much better than the bordeaux! It was a bit of a punt, but it was the right car at the right price with all the paperwork. I also recommend getting the mot certificate number, then you can check the history back to 2004 or something like that.
So it is very possible to buy from a distance, but knowing what to ask is essential IMHO.
A side note, I love my other rangie, the bordeaux, but it is much lower spec than the voice, and the performance difference between its 4.0 and the newer 4.6 is just amazing. I now need to tart it up, get it back on the road and sell it, SWMBO was not happy, and is insisting that I cannot keep both!
Please forgive the uber post, and any typos, it's all been done from a phone!