I think you are wrong, I live in the UK and people around me drive used BMW x5s and Range Rovers both objectively bad vehicles and not best bang for buck.
Car are a fashion statement no matter how much or little wealth you have.
Car are a fashion statement no matter how much or little wealth you have.
Often it isn't a fashion statement, and often people just like that particular car. Some people like Fords, Volvos, Vauxhalls or whatever. They just happen to like them for whatever reason.
I happen to like old Land Rovers because I like driving one. I like the look of them as well, but it isn't a fashion statement. People do come up to me and ask me about my vehicle (because it is still mostly original), but a lot of the time it is curiosity.
Because those used cars are cheap to buy for you in the UK, but there are no cheap used 2CVs yet on the market, so the only customers are those with money.
And those people are chasing status, not fashion. Different things.
(At least that's how I read OP.)
I got my vehicle with an MOT about 2 years ago. Let's just say I've spent another £5000 on a vehicle I paid £10000 for. A good part of that is labour for work I couldn't do myself. Much of this is age-related. I've also been visited by the "Lucas Prince of Darkness" (https://www.mez.co.uk/lucas.html, https://www.hermit.cc/tmc/humor/lucas.htm) on at least two occasions.
My vehicle gets 30 MPG, which is reasonable considering the engine was designed back in the late 80s.
I love driving the things, but anything made by Land Rover is more of a love affair rather than simply a vehicle.
It is either expensive to buy and then expensive to maintain, or it is cheap to buy and you will be replacing all the parts and spending every weekend wretching, and it will be expensive anyway.
A hilarious typo, or actual response after seeing the mechanic’s bill?
What was that saying, "there is no car more expensive to own than cheap luxury car?"
Part of this is the Land Rover tax; the other part is them requiring constant maintenance. Also, you don't know what sort of bush fixes have been done to it.
It is £4000 for a new replacement and you can't get it from anywhere other than the dealer.
He was complaining that he was utterly reliant on the dealer for repairs.
That would mean whole Inverter module (cars use same electronic that drives motor for charging), in that case new dealer £4000 price starts making some (but not a lot as I assume car still drives thus the expensive bits are working) sense. Still should be able to source something second hand if car is not under warranty.
Generally. I've had issues with electronic modules that need to be re-coded and can only be done at the dealer.
I've had a light cluster that would be a few thousand for a replacement after the ballast failed. The ballast failed after the sealed unit had water ingress due to the sealant (or whatever it was) failing between the light glass and the module body.
I sourced a second hand unit from a breaker but it needed to be coded to the computer. I sold the vehicle with the fault for as I didn't want to spend any more money fixing electrical faults (there were other previously).
The whole thing is built in a way where you cannot repair any of it and requires a dealer to be involved.
This is one of the reasons why I drive a vehicle that only has simple electronics now (my vehicle does not have an ECU) and generally avoid smart/IoT anything.
Range Rover / Land Rover unreliability is often overstated. I and my relatives have owned other brands of cars that were "more reliable", and they've had many of the same issues as Land Rovers.
What matters is whether the car has been looked after.
e.g., my sister's Toyota is plagued with electric issues. My sister-in-law's Mini engine blew up (a known engine issue, but unknown to them).
Often it is how well maintained that dictates whether it is reliable or not.
I said it was overstated. I won't pretend that some of the stuff (especially on the newer vehicles) can be quite poor, especially when it comes to vehicle security. However, often a lot of problems with these vehicles are because people buy a vehicle they can't afford to maintain, e.g., vehicles not having an oil change for a long time, and people wonder why it goes bang.
Landrovers require constant maintenance. If you don't like working on a vehicle or are on a budget, don't buy a Land Rover.
As for the other failure I mentioned, they are not subjective. The failure on the Mini is a known issue with a particular Mini engine (the BMW N14 engine). There are known electrical issues with many Toyotas, especially with the Yaris.
> Unless you're talking about a mid-60s Landie w/ a dozen moving parts, all made of cast steel.
Any series up until the TD5 Defender are simple to repair. Electronics make modern vehicles a nightmare to work on. While the electronics in many of those vehicles aren't the best. You can fix it with nothing more than a Haynes manual and multimeter.
See, I think we may be having a difference of semantics-"maintenance", to me and much of the rest of the USAian carbuying public means "regular oil changes, filter changes, and timing belts/chains & water pumps at 60-120K miles."
It does not mean: -new cam cover, rear main seal & oilpan gaskets at 60K. -4x suspension airbags @ $2000/per at 85K -high-pressure fuel pump at 90K (for the GDI ones)
...these are the first three things I think of when I hear "bought a used RangeRover."
Euros are weirdly tolerant of some of this shit. An Audi fan said to me that their GDI V8 was "easy to maintain"; even in light of having to have it brought in to walnut-shell-blast the coke off of the intake valves every 40K miles. No, buddy, your engine was misdesigned.
The older ones, while requiring high maintenance, were very easy to repair because, to be quite honest, the design didn't really change that much for 40 years. I had someone best explain it as "1950s vehicle using 1880s tech".
Their newer vehicles IMO are crap, but I think all new vehicles are crap (and that includes EVs)."
X5 - despite its bad reputation - is actually very reliable nowadays. That B58 engine is one hell of a robust machine. And Range Rovers have 4 to 5 year manufacturer warranties.
Also, they're not off-road vehicles (Wranglers, Defenders and Broncos are); they're family cars that combine practicality with great driving dynamics, advanced tech, and a touch of luxury. Also, both have PHEVs, and now even BEVs variants.
I'm not a SUV guy myself, I know their bad sides - but calling these two models "objectively bad" is both ignorant, and patronising. Objectively (as in: let's take a bunch of cars and compare them to each other) they're two of the best ones out there.
And even if this all magically changed in the past couple of years, the old reputation applies to all the ones people bought before, going back to the other person's original point that a large number of people buy cars based on looks. Also the ones that aren't off-roaders are a niche in their lineup.
I don't thing anyone is _actually_ taking their range rover offroading in any "real" way.
>Working class people still choose best bang/range for the buck car since their car is a tool, not a fashion statement
I was responding to this statement here.
people have Luis vuiton branded stuff because it was a status brand. It was a status brand because it was exclusive. it was exclusive because it was expensive.
BMWs used to be exclusive, only executives would drive them. THey were expensive, so were only given to execs (if it was a company car) or bought because execs had more cash (generally)