118 on AT, that are less than 2 yrs old, not sure what you are after though? Finding the right vehicle for us has always gone with a lot of searching to find the right one, but we always buy older vehicles due to budget constraints. If you can invest the time, you will find the right car.

1. Land Rover registered the vehicle, therefore in my eyes the dealer is not lying when they say it's an ex-LR vehicle. Thrifty are merely the bailee's of it until it is returned to LR at the end of the agreement.

2. All approved Dealers work on a £5k margin on Freelanders. There is room for manoeuvre, but frankly given the fact that they are suddenly very popular again despite being discontinued, why would they want to give them away?

3. A Metropolis with that low a mileage at under £31k is a steal. Your loss will be somebody else's gain very soon I suspect, which is why the dealer was happy to have it back - they know it will sell easily. Foraging near Gaydon....
——————————————
MY13 HSE Lux SD4, Baltic Blue - current, 30,000> miles without fault
MY12 HSE 2.2 SD4, Sumatra Black - gone after 10 months/43,000 fault-free miles

Thanks for your reply,
I am looking for the best one possible for the price!

The main reason for my original post was to raise awareness of this deceitful practice.

EVERY CAR DEALERSHIP IS DOING THIS! Lots of ex rental cars for sale, lots of dealers omitting to tell the purchaser the cars true history.

All we want is a grey Metropolis with a reasonable provenance

NOT AN EX RENTAL CAR

Last edited by Tulgey on 7th Aug 2015 12:24 pm. Edited 1 time in total

Badger1970 wrote:

1. Land Rover registered the vehicle, therefore in my eyes the dealer is not lying when they say it's an ex-LR vehicle. Thrifty are merely the bailee's of it until it is returned to LR at the end of the agreement.

2. All approved Dealers work on a £5k margin on Freelanders. There is room for manoeuvre, but frankly given the fact that they are suddenly very popular again despite being discontinued, why would they want to give them away?

3. A Metropolis with that low a mileage at under £31k is a steal. Your loss will be somebody else's gain very soon I suspect, which is why the dealer was happy to have it back - they know it will sell easily.

My last FL2 a 2010 was a company lease car, it was had by me from new until it had 60000 on the clock, it was then replaced by another. The old car went to BCA, however it did have on the log car, the last owner was a car lease / rental company.
Now if I saw that it would probably put me off, the vast majority of 3 year old company cars are in a dreadful state when returned, scratch up and dinted, seats well bummed etc all that is classed as general wear and tear for its age.
My car was looked after as if it was my own, Im not driving around in something that looks like a skip no matter who the car belongs to, when it went, the collection company said of my car blimey you dont see many in this condition it will make a nice buy for someone this.
So just because it says ex rental etc, doesnt necessarily mean its going to have been abused and driven by hundreds of people who couldnt care less , in fact sometimes privately owned cars are in a worse state, those owned by farmers for example.
I think I would rather have an ex rental a few months old than a car farmer Giles has used on his fields and is cacked up underneath and had the odd sheep in the back.
So in my case if the dealer said oh this is a rental car it would have given the wrong impression to the next owner maybe as it was my own personal car never driven by anyone else.
I do agree the dealer should make it absolutley clear who the last owner was and exactly hat it was use for / by, its easy to find out they only have to ring up the last owner/keeper.

Last edited by Landiroamer on 7th Aug 2015 7:38 am. Edited 1 time in total

The question of ex rental is a bit vague, most of these so called ex rentals are courtesy cars for LR when there is long term or warranty work on cars still under warranty, your dealer may not have enough cara available, also other manufactures may also use them. They are cars specifically for certain clients and are not available to the general public. I know a Subaru dealer that supplied Freely HSE Lux as a courtesy car at times. Mine is one, ex Enterprise with 6.5K when I bought it in 2013 and 8 months old complete with tow bar and full size spare, no hire company would spec that, very pleased, but you may notice that they are mostly HSE+ my PC is slightly to the right of Genghis
2012 HSE SD4 In Orkney Grey now gone, best car ever.

Thanks for your helpful replies
Still searching.....................

I changed my FL2 for an Ex Enterprise Vauxhall Insignia SRI Vx Line Red.

It is up on the miles but is only just over a year old. There were a few little things that needed fixing (drivers sun visor, boot carpet and couple of scuffs) but the Vauxhall dealer is being extremely helpful and sorting them all out FOC.

The dealer said that with it being the Vx Line Red spec, it would not have been a general rental car but would have been one of the managers cars which I would agree with. The rental cars would have been basic SRi spec only.

Overall the car is immaculate, and drives really well. I could not have afforded a £16k year old car but due to the miles I can afford this one.

The Freelanders would be a similar story, except I couldn't afford a year old Land Rover no matter what the mileage.

I kinda get where your coming from re the ex rental, but this is the bit I'm wee bit confused (it's easily done) you got the car you wanted in the colour you wanted at the price you wanted with 6.5k miles . For me as long as there wasn't any dents or stone chips on the outside and the inside is A1 , what's the problem ? You would still have 2 yrs warranty . As I said earlier my car has the same miles on it and I wrap it with cotton wool and there is a mark on the passenger seat and a wee stone chip next to the petrol cap (stone kicked up by a police car) . Do it now ! Your a long time dead !!

Tulgey wrote:

1. Actually it was never registered to LANDROVER. It was registered to Scot Group ( Thrifty Car and Ban Rental). It was sold to Farnells via British Car Auctions , LANDROVER never came into the equation.

An interesting debate so thought I would add my tuppence-worth.

I too bought a Metropolis recently (following the release of almost 100 Metropolis’s onto the market) under the impression that it was an ex-Land Rover vehicle and then discovered that the previous registered keeper was Scot Group Ltd (T/A Thrifty Car and Van Rental). I was annoyed not because it was an ex-Thrifty vehicle but because I felt I had been misled by the Dealer.

Since taking delivery of the vehicle, I have uncovered a couple of small issues;

1. The Lumbar Support on the driver’s seat didn’t work. This was replaced under warranty by my local dealer.
   
2. One of the emergency key blades was missing and the inside of the fob was broken (looks like someone prised the blade out rather than sliding it out). This was replaced by the supplying dealer at no cost.

1. If the vehicle was a true rental, the per-day cost would put off most people, so it would probably not have been driven by “boy racers” or it would have been rented for special occasions.
   
2. True Rental Vehicles have to be returned to the manufacturer in showroom condition (I have visited an operation near Milton Keynes that does this work for Mercedes-Benz and they do an amazing job).
   
3. As far as I could tell, Thrifty don’t offer Land Rovers to rent (this chimes with the comments made by Badger).

My November registered Lux (OV63xxx) is, according to the 'log book', ostensibly an ex Land Rover vehicle. Bought it two+ months ago in absolutely immaculate condition (including the ivory windsor) with just 8K miles on the clock and a two year warranty.

It never occurred to me that it might be anything other than a Land Rover fleet car but now reading that it may be an ex rental / lease doesn't trouble me in the slightest. I bought the car that I liked, could afford and wanted and to that end, nothing has changed. Even if it was driven a little boisterously over it's some of it's 8k miles - so what.

If I was buying it again with the notion that it may be an ex hire fleet car, would I still buy it? Yes!

Interesting thread. I'm looking a metropolis models in loire blue and have noticed many are 6 to 10k miles at £30 to 32k. I've talked to several different dealers and the different vehicles have all been said to be ex LR company vehicles, with the added comment "...the vehicle is known to us..."

With this in mind I thought it would be an ex employee of LR who owned the vehicle. Like "bob" who works at LR and replaces the vehicle every year (?) with another LR produce as he gets a discount or incentive etc. If this is all true... will bob's name be on the log book? If not what should I expect to see on the log book? LR themselves perhaps?

The subject of Thrifty is interesting. I have used their vehicles previously when hired by my employer. Some years ago I was in their local office and they were talking about getting a vehicle returned as it was sold. I quizzed them on this and all their vehicles they hire out are up for sale. It was said that if the correct match came up, and it was on hire, then they would look to swop the vehicle for another to get it sent off for sale. This surprised me. I was told Thrifty make more from vehicle sales than hire, as they buy in bulk cheaper than dealers... then feed dealer supply if they have what they want. I don't know how much of this is true but several peeps in the office agreed to this. Last one I had was a pug estate which clocked 900 miles in 5 days for £143+vat hire cost and no charge for miles. Hippo's videos - Honorary Tratterer

Hippo, I know that it's not registered to "Bob". Now:
17MY Discovery D5 2.0 HSE (Carpathian):

Gone::
(04/17): 16.5MY Discovery Sport HSE (Waitomo)
(08/16): 16MY Discovery Sport HSE Lux Auto (Corris Grey + Black pack)
(11/15): 15MY Freelander 2 Metropolis SD4 (Loire blue)

As above. The ECO scheme does not register any "Bobs" on a V5 Foraging near Gaydon....
——————————————
MY13 HSE Lux SD4, Baltic Blue - current, 30,000> miles without fault
MY12 HSE 2.2 SD4, Sumatra Black - gone after 10 months/43,000 fault-free miles