There was a cracking 110 utility in Corris Grey with Black pack and premium interior sitting in dealers showroom. It looked the must nuts. 21MY Defender 90 S 3.0 D200

This is just my idea of how it should be

Range Rover - luxury, premium, performance focused (true German rivals as has been said)

Discovery - affordable, functional family vehicles

Defender - all out workhorse with a touch more comfort to keep the Japanese invasion at bay 21MY Defender 90 S 3.0 D200

LR NUT wrote:

The cause of the turbos popping is the turbo breather filter getting clogged up! My FL1 has the BMW engine 2.0 TD4 and its breather filter is also fitted in the RR L322 3.0 TD6

BMW stated that these filters will last the life of the engine yes that's right the ultimate driving machine boys

It was only in 2007 that BMW told Land Rover that they were now to be replaced every years 12,000 and boy what a difference it makes as town driving clogs them up! Needing to get the old girl done in March along with the full service


Below is a picture of a fecked FL1 because of the blue breather filter not being changed and the last pic shows where it goes under the engine cover on a FL1

The Doctor wrote:

Ok, not always as the Merc S-Class is seen as the king of luxury cars but if you read the vast majority of reviews, no matter how hard Audi try with the A4 or Merc with the new C-Class, the 3 series is easily the best car.

Same story with the 5 series. Forget the E-Class, the A6 or the XF, the BMW is far superior. The new Discovery Sport is no match for the X3 apparently.

Love them or hate them, are BMW really so superior or do they just write the biggest cheques for advertising etc. before the reviews come out?

Perhaps the new Jaguar XE can at least get close to the 3 series... LL.B (Hons) - University of Derby
LOT (Lord of Time) - University of Gallifrey

I had three FL1s the first was X reg petrol and had the head gasket blow plus the noisy tyres problem and very poor air con and poor build quality. That was a British Leyland car. Then I had a 52 reg and then an 04 reg both TD4s which were produced under BMW . Neither of these cars gave me any trouble, BMW had re engineered a lot of the car and the difference was noticeable. The engines were reliable, tyre wear problem sorted, new electrics, aircon better (but not brilliant). That is my only experience of BMW.

Then Ford built the Freelander 2 and that is another story....

Yes Dorset I recognise you from the Freelander 1 forum

Even the last of the 1.8 petrols were bad at blowing gaskets at 30,000 miles  MY14 Kahn Converted Dynamic - Fuji White Ebony/Pimento Interior
MY15 Xenon Headlight Conversion

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

I am right off BMWs at the moment. I have a job waiting to do in my workshop on an M3 - no guts between 2,000 & 4,000 rpm. The Vanos (Kraut for variable valve timing gear) is knackered. It will be a 7 hour job and will cost more than it cost me to fit my FL2 replacement rear diff which took me 4 hours. I googled the problem and find it is a very common failing on this engine. John
07 HSE Narvick Black
Land Rover Series One
Triumph Rocket 111 (sadly gone!)

All FL1's were first built during the BMW era, first launched in 1997, may have been designed during the BAC era but not BL, that was long dead. LR were still part of the Rover Group which was bought by BMW in 1994, then LR hived off to Ford in 2000 my PC is slightly to the right of Genghis
2012 HSE SD4 In Orkney Grey now gone, best car ever.

Teefin wrote:

I had a 325 until moving to FL2 if you forget the seats are not ideal it was by far the best driving car I ever owned. Build quality excellent.
Downside: off set seat, parked up when snow / ice on road.

Would I have another? Definitely as a summer car, new x drive might help now though.

Great cars are made when a sufficient number of great engineers apply themselves to meet a sound design brief and the company allows and enables the final product to come to the right market to meet and indeed create customer demand. Nationality is not the issue per se, its just that Germany has more and better engineering capability than we do in the UK, the Japanese motor industry also has more than we do.
But the Germans or Japanese do not have it all their own way - the original Range Rover was a brilliant design - far better than anything comparable anywhere. And the third generation L322 Range Rover was also so far superior to competing German or Japanese offerings that the positive effect is still there with the current model Rangey - its a British icon that still dominates that sector worldwide - even if the L322 was to a considerable extent a product of BMW engineering excellence.

Trying to compete with far larger competitors on their own turf and on their terms is crazy - its that intensely stupid notion (beloved by some of our political classes) that one can "punch above one's weight"- in practice that invariably leads to getting a good kicking. Landrover can beat BMW or Merc or the Japs if it stays focused on being best at what it is best at. That does not mean stop innovating- far from it - Landrovers must be different from other marques - product differentiation is key but it won't come from employing style and image consultants - its about the engineers.

Left

Last edited by Legoman on 3rd Jan 2015 4:06 am. Edited 1 time in total

If you want a car that is fuel efficient, can cruise on the motorway for part of its day and then drive across a ploughed field (and get out instead of getting stuck) then an FL2 is ideal and nothing outside the LR stable can touch it. So speaks my Agronomist son and his co workers. Reliability is another issue.

Slightly off topic but I used to work for a large UK computer company called ICL. Back in the 80's we were plagued with hardware reliability problems and I used to have weekly meetings with customers about resolving the various issues. Then we started a relationship with Fujitsu and they set about redesigning some the systems. Their attitude was different to the UK engineers who were interested in why something failed and how to rectify the problem. The Japanese view was simply that it should never have failed in the first place and that all components should be capable of doing more than asked of them. Systems were designed with over rated power supplies, bigger fans, better edge connectors, new circuit board technology etc. The transformation was unbelievable and within a couple of years the customer reliability meetings were cancelled as we had nothing to talk about.
Fujitsu eventually took over ICL and still operates in this country, ICL would have gone the way of British Leyland if left to itself.

Hi dorsetfreelander, did you mean to write 'fuel efficient'. I agree with the versatility of the fl2 as i use mine on a muddy smallholding and then it does the school runs but the fuel economy is abysmal. I consider the fl2 a vehicle that can not be owned without a warranty as the reliability is also shocking. A modern bmw is a more reliable efficient car than a modern lr, but i would not buy a bmw as i would also have to buy a proper 4x4 as well to get though the fields.