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Years ago while on a trip we came upon a bad accident. A brand new range rover had over heated and the driver was forced to pull over into the emergency lane and stop. A few minutes later an eighteen wheeler drifted off of the road and hit the rover knocking it into a ditch. The woman driving it was hurt and HER SMALL CHILD KILLED. This says allot about why these POS have a bad reputation.....note it was new and still not dependable.
I'm going to quote a comment from a Range Rover (enthusiast) forum poster: "If you need to ask about reliability before purchasing, then the RR is not the vehicle for you."
Yeah, I also heard this from a guy who was selling his RR Sport, "If you're concerned about the maintenance costs, then the probably isn't for you."
I love 'em, but they are a bit overengineered...this lends towards more mechanical issues.
I don't want the adventure in my ride to be not knowing whether or not I'll get there.
A neighbor of mine bought a new Range Rover a few years ago, and the neighborhood joke became, "What color is George's loaner car this week?". That overpriced piece of junk was in the dealer's service department once or twice every month--sometimes for days at a time.
After a couple of years, he got tired of the incredibly unreliable nature of that beast, and he bought a VW to replace it. Clearly, this guy doesn't do a lot of research on reliability before buying a vehicle.
Almost sounds like I couldn't even depend on RRs if a natural disaster where to hit. I guess Land Rover just uses this SUV as a post-sale revenue generator for their service shops. Too bad.
Merc63 typifies the satisfied Range Rover owner ...
with many years of professional automotive and auto body experience, tooling, service information. Merc63 must be able to fabricate everything needed to do the work or do an end-run on those tools that the pro's don't seem to be able to accompish the repair tasks without.
Just for reference, this is the guy who's posted:
1) finding a low mileage engine for a 750i BMW for $800 +/- to replace one in his wife's damaged car and getting it shipped for next to nothing from a Seattle area boneyard to the East Coast where he lives ...
2) rebuilding a wrecked (right rear quarter, IIRC) Porsche 911 that he bought for almost nothing and turned into a work of beauty worth many multiples of that with nothing more than a few odd tools he had on hand in his home garage. Made it sound like it took nothing more than an old rusty can opener, a bunch of valueless donor parts from other wrecked Porsche's that were just sitting around, a couple minutes with a welding rig to repair the oil tank in a custom fab job, and a few dollars worth of paint applied in the course of a couple weekends of easy recreational effort. Yeah, right ... the pix he posted showed a pro quality job result that a lot of restoration and paint shops I've seen over the years couldn't match on their best day .... looked like a pretty good repair and cosmetically excellent results from Merc63's little home garage. This simply isn't work that the average car owner can undertake, let alone a lot of pro's .... and especially under the limitations of a home garage compared to a pro paint booth environment for applying finish coats.
3) similarly, numerous restoration jobs on brit, italian, and german cars posted at implausibly low cost and without any apparent use of the specialty tools that the pro's use. Merc63's time in all these projects isn't accounted for, but he makes it sound like minimum wage would be more pay then he values his time at ... or he's the fastest auto body repariman and painter in the worldwide history of automotive repair since Benz put a motor on a chassis ...
I have no doubt that Merc63 can keep any vehicle, including a Range Rover, on the road for a minute fraction of the costs per term of ownership that anybody else would encounter. And if there was a small fraction of a sample group of any given car that didn't exhibit the common problems of the group, Merc63 would always own the ones that didn't have the problems or exhibit the failures. As an industry professional for well over 50 years now, my hat's off to one of the most outstanding, capable, knowledgeable, competent, and resourcefull auto repair techs to have ever lived .... and he consistently is the sharpest buyer in the industry. You can count on him being able to acquire any year/make/model, no matter how popular ... for a fraction of the price that prevails in the market at the time. I'm especially jealous of his prowess with Fiat 124's, which my wife had an infatuation with until the reality of my incompetence to keep these on the road for nothing became evident.
I've employed some of the best techs in the euro auto repair biz in my shop for decades, been around friend's competing shops that were doing everything from minor repairs through to $500,000 to over $1mil frame-off restorations on collector cars ... and not one of them could ever match the quality of workmanship, low cost, and finished results that Merc63 routinely posts as his achievements. While I can't say that there might be a bit of exaggeration on Merc63's postings because I've never seen his work first-hand ... I know that the last time I sourced a set of air shocks for an early Range Rover, they were $150 each plus freight and my customer was damn'ed happy that I could get them and as inexpensively as I did. Even at that, $400 for all the parts and no mention of labor time sounds somewhat implausible to the regular owner of this series of vehicle.
Anyway, if you want real entertaining info on Range Rover problems ... google some of the folk boycotting their dealers in England with brand new cars that have had repeated hard component parts failures, like suspension items. These simply aren't failure items in most of the automotive world, but Range Rover has figured out how to be different with disastrous effects.
So i'm in the market for a used Range Rover Sport, especially since I'm sure it could also tow my boat (21ft Searay) and I don't want one of those large Ford/Chevy/GMC trucks. But I keep hearing these "they're always at the dealer service shop" comments. Is this just a maker quality issue (like Harleys always having an oil drip) or does this mostly apply to older models?
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Get an Infiniti QX56. 400HP/413lb-ft and can tow 8500lbs. Better MPG, more HP/Torque, more towing capacity, carries more people, way better reliability. Same price range.
Get an Infiniti QX56. 400HP/413lb-ft and can tow 8500lbs.
I agree. The Range Rovers are garbage. My friend leased one for 3 years--it spent half the time in the shop. Buying one--forget about it. Buying an old one--get ready to go poor.
RR have been consistently at the bottom of any/all reliability/dependability ratings for decades.
Heck, even TopGearUK make fun of them on this issue. TopGear USA just had a recent (dumb) episode with the RR Sport vs Escalade vs Grand Cherokee SRT where they ragged on RR's reliability (and it stalled mysteriously in the snow in that episode, lol).
When they lined up to do the runway race on the USA version, the back end raised up and malfunctioned, Tanner had to shut it off and hope it would reset.
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