Just returned from a visit to see my son who is a geologist in Botswana. We covered about 900km on a mixture of tarmac and bush tracks. What is noticeable is that hardly any landrovers at all are present. I saw one old Defender, an old Disco and an Evoque (!) Most vehicles you see are mainly Toyota landcruisers and Nissan pickups. The word is that Landrovers are just not tough enough to take it and the newer ones have too much in the way of electronics to go wrong. We drove for hours over unmade tracks like corrugated concrete or through sand and water. Any traction problems and the centre diff lock usually gets it sorted. He drives a 4.2 litre auto Landcruiser which has done 240k kms with few repairs.

Makes you wonder if JLR is now chasing the urban lifestyle market.

Because few in Botswana are going to pay £30K+ for a vehicle - premium cars make for big profits, cheap cars dont. Jules

If you see an Evoque in Africa, it was probably stolen in Croydon!!! Td4 XS manual, Orkney Grey, MY2014

Old saying an aussie friend of the family used to say to my grandad "Only two cars will take you across Australia the Land Rover or the Land Cruiser! If you want to come back alive take the Land Cruiser  MY14 Kahn Converted Dynamic - Fuji White Ebony/Pimento Interior
MY15 Xenon Headlight Conversion

MY17 RRS SVR - Estoril Blue Cirrus/Ebony 🪣💺’s

jules wrote:

Because few in Botswana are going to pay £30K+ for a vehicle - premium cars make for big profits, cheap cars dont.

LR NUT wrote:

Old saying an aussie friend of the family used to say to my grandad "Only two cars will take you across Australia the Land Rover or the Land Cruiser! If you want to come back alive take the Land Cruiser

Isn't there another old one that says 80% of land Rovers ever made are still on the road, the rest made it home OK.

LR's are very popular in South Africa though and have seen real growth over the last few years, esp with the Discovery's 3 and 4

In fact, read a report where LR sells 3 times more than any other brand in the luxury SUV segment

Perhaps we should just tour North a bit more

Fair enough but my son has worked in a variety of African countries and says that you don't see many LandRovers now. Perhaps South Africa has more paved roads than most African countries.

Have you noticed that that groups like the Taliban or other middle eastern armed militias are always in Toyota pickup trucks. I wonder what the effect on world politics would be if Toyota stopped making them?

attack on US forces by the Taliban foiled due to snapped fan belt

Another interesting note about South Africa and LR's - we the only country in the world where the Discovery outsells the FL2, and by a huge margin I might add