I need to know all about: Land Rover Discos

My father-in-law bought a late 90's Disco (no idea of the series or exact year) over ten years ago, and its been his daily driver ever since. I think it has only stranded him a few times, but it always has something wrong with it. Years ago, it hit the point where he only started caring about the stuff the keeps it from running or makes it unsafe. Parts prices were definitely higher than other cars, and his local oil change place (he can wrench, just prefers not to on his daily driver) doesn't stock the oil filters, so he buys them in bulk and brings one in whenever he needs to change oil.

He doesn't abuse it or off-road heavily, but he is a surveyor, so it does see some mild off-road use.

Just recently, he overheated it, and this time, it may have have been enough to warp a head. It is drinking coolant faster than usual. My mother-in-law is pushing him to replace rather than repair, and I think this time he may do just that. He's not allowed to buy another used Disco according to her, but is allowed to get a new Land Rover. Her logic is if it needs as much maintenence as the old one did, it needs a warranty.

Regarding American vs British reliability. I think part of it is that Euro cars do tend to come to the US spec'd out higher, so there's more to go wrong. Also, seems like there's more engine options in Europe (especially diesels), so maybe the more reliable ones in Europe are a drivetrain we can't get here. Also, are roads salted as heavily over there as they are in the US midwest? And finally, Toyota and Honda in 90's really raised the standards for what people in America consider to be reliable. I saw some Toyotas and Hondas in England recently, but mostly European cars, so I think there is at least a bit of Euro-centrism going on.

Kenny_McCormic wrote:

BoxheadTim wrote: IIRC you want to keep the air suspension - at least on a Range Rover - if you want to tow... The air suspension seems to be generally reliable if looked after. Yes, you have to occasionally change the bags but the main danger to them (again, at least on the Range Rover) appears to be the tire place that jacks the car up on the frame and thus pops out the airbags...

Are you trying to say the factory suspension system is so poorly designed that it can droop enough to lose a airbag, on a 4x4 vehicle? That's ridiculous. If say, Ford, or GM made a SUV that shat coils out if you jacked it up, there would be riots in the streets, recalls and apologies on the news.

I believe that any car with air suspension would have that problem. The LS400s with air suspension have a switch in the trunk to disable it and a warning in the car that if it's jacked up without the switch in the off position it will damage the air bags. So I don't think it's a failing specific to Land Rover but rather a weakness inherent to air suspensions.

@Adrian Thompson: Like all things the naysayers, myself included, have a tendency to overstate things. But I have owned two Range Rovers and my father has owned one for a long time and they have had the largest collection of expensive failures of any vehicle I've heard of. I have my dad's old service records in my computer and they total $35,000 in repairs over a 10-year period. That's insane. One big difference might be the number of miles driven; how many people in the UK will drive a car or truck 20,000 miles (that's 32,000 kilometers) in a given year? That's not out of the ordinary here. My dad probably put over 150,000 miles on his RR in those 10 years. The truck likely has 250,000+ miles on it at this point - that's an estimate since the instrument cluster has been replaced TWICE. With new parts both times. The transfer case has been replaced twice, the transmission rebuilt once and repaired twice, the rear end replaced a couple times, the front end replaced at least once, etc. You would have to get a serious lemon of a Japanese vehicle to do 1/10th the repairs in those miles.

In reply to dculberson:

Last I heard, LS400s weren't lovingly praised for their off-road ability and suspension articulation, nor fawned over by Jeremy Clarkson. Nor did Lexus dealers feature an off-road demonstration course designed to ensure that the vehicle would pegleg at least once if driven over it.

True enough.