Hello to All ,
So new year and i have decided ignore the head and my next car will be one i really want/like , that is an L322 ( this has nothing to do with me working for JLR !!! ). So my post here is to "pick the brains" contained in this "cloud" , I have done what seems like a lot of searching through forums and a couple of Facebook sites for hints and tips , and this is what i have gleaned so far , based on my budget of £5000 to £8000 .
I commute about 50 miles a day , the vast majority on motorway and dual carriageway , so i feel the best engine is the 4.4 BMW unit as petrol is cheap at the moment and i can LPG it at some point in the future ( there is a conversion garage near me ) takes to LPG better than the Jaguar engine and it seems to be a stronger unit than the 3.0 TDI .
So i have been searching over the past few weeks , but not had chance to see any in person due to work , this will change in the coming weeks , so my questions are this ;
I have seen a couple of possibles online , one is clean unmodified 1 owner but is 250+ miles away ( so any warranty is useless ) , the other is nearer ( Sheffield ) but looks in the photos to be immaculate ,a later model with more of the options i would in an ideal world like but has 180000 on the clock as opposed to 105000 for the one further away . My main concerns are the big stuff engine/gearbox going as any 2nd hand car will have niggles and it is a Range Rover after all !! , i have owned 2 Nissan Bluebirds in the distant past so i am not expecting that level !! and i assume that most of the big jobs will have been done on a car with the age/milage that i am looking at .
I realise this is subjective but does a 4.4 approaching 200000 miles with full history and lots of bills for work done seem a massive gamble ? I looked again at the high milage car and it is the Jaguar engine NOT the BMW one , sorry for the confusion My plan is to try and buy the "best " i can and run it for a year to see what happens .
Any thoughts and advice would be very welcome

Try to get a 2005 (BMW) Vogue V8 Petrol with the touchscreen Nav as a minimum. If your budget stretches get the 2006 facelift Vogue V8 Petrol with the newer AJV8 engine. They both drive really nicely and make a good sound as well as being smoother than the Diesels.

(my advice would be to ignore the older 2002-2004 non touchscreen cars)

like this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2006-LAND-ROVER-...SwjVVV2GhP

I prefer the older cars with "rectangle" headlights and "smoother" side grills
To me that is the "classic" design and still looks good to this day .
It is a natural progression from the p38 and doesn't scream "SPORT" like the 2006+ jaguar cars .
The 2010+ again was a step in wrong direction in my opinion .

However ....
The advances throu the years make a 2006 a better car .
2007+ better again .
And 2010+ better again !!
And in my opinion a run-out 2013 is the superior 322 .

Upside down uh !! ??

I wanted certain options for our car , and my girlfriend looked at it from a "designer's" point of view .
So it had to be stornaway grey with ivory trim and light wood interior ...
Yeah I know , hard to find
My criterio was that he be an hse with certain options .
Easy uh ?

No .
If you went out to buy an hse in 2006 and added just a couple of options you went over the base price of a supercharged .
The supercharged came stock with all the options , so everybody who "needed" certain things bought an sc whilst those that just "needed" a rangerover bought a stock hse ....

My problem was stornaway only came out in 2007 , and out of the 100+ Supercharged 2007s for sale in the USA at any time
Only around 10 of them would be stornaway grey .

But here's the kicker ...
The supercharged came stock with full black leather and piano black wood . An excellent looking combination !!!
However , ours had to be ivory (to match the headlining and pillar trims) and light wood to match the ivory . Plus stornaway grey was a great match to the plastic inside the lights and the side and front grilles ,and rangerover badges front and rear
(With hindsite "the designer" was right , and it's as if the lr322 was designed to be stornaway)
I was wondering how many people went to the dealers to buy that trim to be told it was "normal" on giverney green but by the time they added a few options i(such as the colour they really wanted) it was dearer than the supercharged so a compromise was made ......

In the end it took me over 3 months of pain to "our" car , and that was searching the whole of the USA .
I'd actually given up and we had agreed a compromise when I found a black sc with "the right" trim combo .
She didn't like it as much as stornaway , but she relented .
And as the purchase order was being overnight end to me , I had one last look and found the right car !!!




So I guess my advice is to research what you want , then hold out for it to come along .
Be patient .
And buy the best you can

I would ask if it was the right car for the job if you were looking at ways to reduce the fuel consumption and use it as a daily driver.

It could be an expensive way to commute; fuel, maintenance, LPG conversions etc.

The BMW engine might be ripe for LPG but have you considered the other potential areas that might fail such as the gearbox from that ear cars? I think it was the same ZF model fitted to similar age Audi S8's (I had one) and it killed a few of those off too.

Personally I would be very wary of using an earlier L322 as a daily driver. If I felt strongly that I had to have one, I'd buy one that left enough budget left over for a small car to commute and enjoy the RR for high days and holidays.