I have thought about this post for a while. It’s no secret that Land Rovers have steadily lost some of the overland expedition market especially in Africa, to Toyota. Land Cruisers hold their value like a vault while Range Rovers plummet. Why?

Well when your Range Rover is sitting in pieces in your garage for months as you try to retime it you realize the answer. It’s the reliability. There is a real issue with Land Rover reliability. I am advocating that Land Rover take a page out of the playbook of Lotus and consider using Toyota engines.

Engineering engines has to be expensive especially with ever increasing efficiency standards, paying for ZF drivetrain parts, has to be expensive, warranty payments to dealers have to be expensive...

Toyota engines were once under powered and un-refined. However, that’s just not the case anymore. The 5.7L and 5.0L V8s are quite fun and can be supercharged, and there are some nice V6 options as well. These engines are rock solid. The running gear is bomb proof. They are nice engines that are smooth and produce prodigious amounts of power for years. While utilizing BMW engines didn’t work for Land Rover, there is quite a big difference between Toyota and BMW engine philosophy with Toyota engineer teams spending hours to refine and build incredibly reliable engines.

Land Rover should seriously consider dropping the Jaguar engines and utilizing Toyota engines because their mission vision values and goals in part rely on reliability. You just can’t take a Land Rover into the jungle or off the beaten path very far without a group of vehicles because there is a too high of a chance it will break down... Continued Here http://offroadrover.com/road-trips/land-ro...liability/

I think using Toyota Running Gear would allow us to have our cake and eat it too, enjoy beautiful capable luxury offroaders that are incredibly reliable. I think this is important to Land Rover, perhaps more than Jaguar, because Land Rovers are designed to be taken off of the beaten path.

What do you think? [/url] OffRoadRover.com An American Western Range Rover Off Road Blog

Funnily enough, I recently found a 4x4 breakers local to me. I needed a few bits and noticed they had 2 or 3 l322's in so I popped down.

Got chatting to the owner and he said to me "have a look around the yard and tell me what you don't see?"

There were loads of landrovers plus many other makes but I wasn't sure what he was on about so replied "go on, I give up"

Well the answer was "Japanese" vehicles.

And sure enough, there wasn't a single one. He explained that he never gets them in as breakers because they just go on and on forever.

Had a look at a few shoguns etc and I don't think I could live with one as they are a bit agricultural but I get his point.

Mate of mine has a newengine in his swb 2006 land cruiser commercial, under warranty, he has owned it from new and it's never been abused. I'm sure he said it was a known issue. Personally im a fan of jap cars and they are plentiful in the emerald isle. 2015 4.4 AB
GSXR 1000 K5
R1 1998

I personally think its a multi-faceted problem.

- the euro 4, 5, 6 standards and the drive for economy and better efficiency means that engines are pushed to upper limits of the performance envelope to get the absolute most they can out of them. i.e. rather than designing and engine and having it run at 80% so that it goes on and on and on lazily, they push it to run at 97% and get as much out of it .... in doing so, its far more likely to hit its 100% limit and fail. (figures are pulled out of the air) Think the hare and tortoise analogy. Modern engines being the hare. Equally all the complexity added around monitoring getting the engine to work at that high level. One little thing out of whack, and the whole thing goes out.

- The notion of more power, more power, more power. I don't really give a monkeys whether the newest RR has another 15bhp wrung out of it. I'd much rather have 30bhp less and know that its operating in an easier power band that is not over stressing the engine, and so much more reliable. Sometimes, less is more.

- I think i'd rather see more simple engines fitted personally that go on and on. Can a jap engine fit in an RR ? V8 or else ...

For anyone that’s that impressed by Toyota engines, surely isn’t the logical answer is to buy a Toyota and be done with it?

I’m happy having bought a Land Rover product, even with an SDV8 that still comes from a Ford plant in Mexico, but will ultimately be changed to an in-house JLR engine. Buying engines in from another manufacturer, when you have sufficient volumes to build your own, can be an expensive option and can restrict the number and mix of engines available. For instance, LR told me that they would have built a great deal more Defenders in the last year of production, if only Ford had agreed to sell them the number of engines that they wanted!

Lotus is not really a fair comparison in that the numbers involves are so very small that building their own engine would have been a non starter.

This is a bit like my mates who tell me what wonderful countries other countries are BUT they still live in Britain. Geoff

I thought about a Toyota prior to first fattie...to much like a tractor for senior management-
Now I am soooo comfortable in the beast & not changing for a few years by which time everything will be electric....and more importantly as the brain crumbles & incapable of navigating to the shops, will just instruct elekyRR of my destination, as long as I can remember where I wanted to go ....


Edit... I should add... reliability which was the real question.... the only real problem I have had with a fattie was an alternator on the first one after about 4 years...I can’t think of anything else that has ever warranted an urgent booking for the dealer_ I always buy nearly new with 50-1500 miles on the clock on the basis that if anything rattles , the dealer will of fixed it... touch wood Filters are in fact so good that in certain circumstances, when the ambient air is already polluted, a diesel car will tend to extract more particles from the air than it emits. Emissions Analytics worked with........etc etc

He who dies with the most toys wins...

got a toyota hiace 8 years old 51000 on the clock had oil and filter every year . This year oil and filter , cam belt (not a crack in it) diff oil , gear box oil, front pads, new water pump (slight weep on it) £750 +vat starts 1st time every time
DOES NOT PUT A SMILE ON MY FACE WHEN I DRIVE IT THO

fisha wrote:

I personally think its a multi-faceted problem.

- the euro 4, 5, 6 standards and the drive for economy and better efficiency means that engines are pushed to upper limits of the performance envelope to get the absolute most they can out of them. i.e. rather than designing and engine and having it run at 80% so that it goes on and on and on lazily, they push it to run at 97% and get as much out of it .... in doing so, its far more likely to hit its 100% limit and fail. (figures are pulled out of the air) Think the hare and tortoise analogy. Modern engines being the hare. Equally all the complexity added around monitoring getting the engine to work at that high level. One little thing out of whack, and the whole thing goes out.

- The notion of more power, more power, more power. I don't really give a monkeys whether the newest RR has another 15bhp wrung out of it. I'd much rather have 30bhp less and know that its operating in an easier power band that is not over stressing the engine, and so much more reliable. Sometimes, less is more.

- I think i'd rather see more simple engines fitted personally that go on and on. Can a jap engine fit in an RR ?

MR GLOVER wrote:

got a toyota hiace 8 years old 51000 on the clock had oil and filter every year . This year oil and filter , cam belt (not a crack in it) diff oil , gear box oil, front pads, new water pump (slight weep on it) £750 +vat starts 1st time every time
DOES NOT PUT A SMILE ON MY FACE WHEN I DRIVE IT THO

supershuttle wrote:

This is a bit like my mates who tell me what wonderful countries other countries are BUT they still live in Britain.

Bill wrote:

I thought about a Toyota prior to first fattie...to much like a tractor for senior management-
Now I am soooo comfortable in the beast & not changing for a few years by which time everything will be electric....and more importantly as the brain crumbles & incapable of navigating to the shops, will just instruct elekyRR of my destination, as long as I can remember where I wanted to go ....


Edit... I should add... reliability which was the real question.... the only real problem I have had with a fattie was an alternator on the first one after about 4 years...I can’t think of anything else that has ever warranted an urgent booking for the dealer_ I always buy nearly new with 50-1500 miles on the clock on the basis that if anything rattles , the dealer will of fixed it... touch wood

Red Merle wrote:

For anyone that’s that impressed by Toyota engines, surely isn’t the logical answer is to buy a Toyota and be done with it?

I’m happy having bought a Land Rover product, even with an SDV8 that still comes from a Ford plant in Mexico, but will ultimately be changed to an in-house JLR engine. Buying engines in from another manufacturer, when you have sufficient volumes to build your own, can be an expensive option and can restrict the number and mix of engines available. For instance, LR told me that they would have built a great deal more Defenders in the last year of production, if only Ford had agreed to sell them the number of engines that they wanted!

Lotus is not really a fair comparison in that the numbers involves are so very small that building their own engine would have been a non starter.

Paul thornton wrote:

Funnily enough, I recently found a 4x4 breakers local to me. I needed a few bits and noticed they had 2 or 3 l322's in so I popped down.

Got chatting to the owner and he said to me "have a look around the yard and tell me what you don't see?"

There were loads of landrovers plus many other makes but I wasn't sure what he was on about so replied "go on, I give up"

Well the answer was "Japanese" vehicles.

And sure enough, there wasn't a single one. He explained that he never gets them in as breakers because they just go on and on forever.

Had a look at a few shoguns etc and I don't think I could live with one as they are a bit agricultural but I get his point.

@cliff5.0sc

I can only go on the experience of the 6 different Land Rovers I’ve had, averaging around 35,000-40,000 miles a year (and it’s going up again! ), with my first one still owned by a colleague and showing 165,000 miles and having had one rear diff at 100,000 miles and it’s first clutch at 165,000 miles.

2/3rds of them have been perfect and the only remotely serious issue on one was a dead high pressure fuel pump which, while annoying, was not unreasonable considering the use they get. Land Rover went the extra mile with a decent loan car (no Disco Sport nonsense! ) for the month that it was off the road and pretty quickly made amends with a substantial contribution to the cost of my new Range Rover for the (negligible) inconvenience caused

While I can’t comment on the reliability of their petrol engines (I’ve never owned a petrol LR), I like to give some balance to Land Rover reliability knocking and give them some credit where credit’s due