DAVE PHILLIPS
WHEN I started writing about Land Rovers, nearly 24 years ago, the 300Tdi engine was the ultimate expression of power. I didn’t realise that it was a golden era and I was witnessing the end of proper Land Rovers.
Back in the spring of 1997, only Defender, Discovery and P38 Range Rover were in production. In those days, any Land Rover launch was rare and a time of excitement among enthusiasts. In the case of the impending appearance of the so-called “baby” Land Rover, the Freelander, the debate was about whether it had the right to wear the green oval badge. After all, it didn’t have beam axles or a proper chassis.
Old-school Land Rover fans were not easily won over. Half of them still reckoned coil springs were an unnecessary modern evil – just like shaving. Beards and leaf springs shared a natural affinity. Yet somehow Freelander, although dismissed as “a hairdresser’s car” by some, was grudgingly welcomed to the family – probably because it performed off-road so much better than other small 4x4s. Off-roading credentials were important, back then.
But the main reason enthusiasts were excited about new model launches was because they expected to be driving those models a few years down the line, once secondhand prices had fallen low enough for them to afford one. It was the way of the world: old Land Rovers steadily lost value until eventually the point was reached when they were deemed unfit for the road and were turned into off-roaders. If you went to the average club trial in 1997, you’d see a lot of 80in Series Is and three-door Range Rover Classics taking part, because rotten examples of both could be picked up for next to nothing.
All that was about to change. It started with the second-generation Range Rover P38, which had such a reputation for unreliability and expensive repair bills that even enthusiasts shunned used ones. Its problem was its ground-breaking new electronic systems, which had a nasty and expensive habit of going wrong.
Ditto its successor, the mighty L322 third-gen Range Rover. Now here was a vehicle I instantly took a shine to. When it was launched in 2002 I fell in love with its sophisticated off-road technology, which made it better in tough conditions than the Defender – a point I proved emphatically when I recovered a helplessly stuck Td5 90 out of a deep swamp at Tixover Quarry with a standard L322. At that moment I was looking forward to the day when I could afford one. About 2012, I reckoned.
Fast forward 18 years and today I could afford several. You can pick them up for peanuts. But I wouldn’t touch one with a bargepole. I was recently offered a V8 in gleaming black with cream leather interior for £1000, but turned it down. It’s simply too expensive to put right all the stuff that will invariably go wrong.
It’s the same story with everything now built by Land Rover. They are all too complicated and costly to keep on the road – and they are getting ever more complicated and costlier.
At the time of writing, there are seven members of the Land Rover tribe, none of which will be viable secondhand in 20 years. In fact, they come with built-in obsolescence these days in the shape of touchscreens, which house all the vital controls. Work out how much one of those critters will cost to replace a few years down the line and you’ll appreciate why I confidently predict that my 36-year-old Ninety will outlast the new Defenders coming off that production line in Slovakia.
None of this will bother Land Rover and rival manufacturers – nor most new car “owners” come to that. These days most people don’t buy new cars: they lease them for a fixed monthly sum on a PCP (Personal Contract Purchase), which includes the cost of repairs. They adore all that technology because it gives them bragging rights – and they don’t have to pay to get it fixed when it goes wrong.
Most car manufacturers don’t care about longevity, because they make their money selling new ones. People like you and me, who buy them ten or more years down the line, are irrelevant.
It’s a situation that will be exacerbated in motoring’s all-electric future, because the batteries are the most costly components in full EVS (as opposed to hybrids). Unless and until somebody finds a way of preventing these batteries from steadily losing capacity, every ten-year-old car will be written off, because a new battery would cost much more than the car is worth.
For enthusiasts like you and me, that means we face the prospect of keeping an ever-ageing fleet of uncomplicated pre-2000 Land Rovers on the road. I’ve no doubt my 1984 Ninety will probably need a new bulkhead and chassis a few years down the line; possibly a rebuild of its 300Tdi engine or R380 gearbox, but these are all affordable repairs. I expect it will outlive me.
New Land Rover launches don’t excite me any more. But the prospect of recycling our existing Land Rovers does.
“Most manufacturers don’t care about longevity, because they make their money selling new ones. People who buy them ten years down the line are irrelevant”