Dont be alarmed...it looks like there could be some scary, unqualified comments here.

I am ex Ford/LR management. The management car scheme is amazing and very generous so there are LOTS of ex management cars around. It may help if i explain the scheme.

Under the Ford / LR scheme (Which i believe carried on at LR after the split), managers are entitled to 2...YES TWO company cars. Depending on the model, a replacement had to be ordered as soon as the car reached 6 months old or 6000 miles. Of course, if the next car took a long time to build, the age or mileage would be higher once actually returned.

With the miles that my wife and I covered, this meant we had 6 new cars a year...so you can see, there will be lots of ex management cars around.

The use of the management cars was restricted to standard road use. They should not be used off road.
The manager who 'owned' the car could allow ANYONE to drive it with their permission...employee or not
The 'owner' off the car always knew it was a temporary thing which sometimes means that they were not cleaned often and niggling warranty issues were never raised as it was an inconvenience. However, many most managers would keep the cars very very clean.
The cars are unlikely to have been driven gently when brand new as the 'owner' would only bee keeping it for a few thousand miles....they were not going to spend many of those running it in only to do it again with the next one in a few months time.
The cars are unlikely to have been serviced before they go to retail as they would not have reached the mileage or age to require it.

The duration that the car was kept was set based on calculations conducted many years ago to ensure the company could get maximum resale back as a nearly new car.
The scheme is a great way for the motor manufacturer to keep volumes high, get nearly new cars on the forecourt quickly and provide a VERY cost effective company car scheme for the thousands of managers they have.

My current Freelander is an ex management car. It did not concern m when i bought it at all as cars don't need to be run in anymore and the companies started charging penalties to the managers if the cars were returned with ANY damage to them.....this drastically changed the quality of the cars as they were returned.

Of course, all of this is different to a dealer demonstrator so check which this is.

I hope this helps.

Chrys FL2 HSE Lux 2011 SD4 Gallway Green.
Fiesta 2014 Ttanium x 1.0 ecoboost - Fantastic 125 bhp 1.0l 3 cylinder turbo!
1976 Triumph Spitfire. Owned for 25 years Fully restored, magazine features - not quite standard
1985 Toyota MR2 MK1a. The oldest surviving example in the UK and one of only 5 left in 8B8 Blue

Of course many of the comments here are truthful and honest, including from those of us who were informed by the dealer it was an ex LR Management Car only to find it was an ex LR Assistance Car managed by Thrifty Car Rental, the first registered keeper.

The reality is, Management Cars are no better or worse than any other. Just view the car like you would any other and pay accordingly, but don't pay a premium.

I get the feeling the dealer has set the price high as numbers are dropping. They did say it was high due to having a high reserve price at auction. But they also said they thought it would meet the high reserve price. The volume on LR's site rises and fall as each wave of FL2's comes through. Some new Metropolis added this week but all around 31-32k at first glance Hippo's videos - Honorary Tratterer

What happens to the Landrover Experience cars when they come off fleet?

Rover/ MG-Rover had a massive company car scheme which I guess the LR scheme came from. (Past) Freelander 2 HSE 2010 MY In Rimini Red.
(Past) RR Evoque Dynamic Lux Si4 In Firenze Red.
(Past) RR Evouque Pure Tech in Barollo Black with bespoke Firenze Red colour coding.
(Present) Freelander Metropolis 2015 MY In Santorini Black with Ivory Premium Leather.

I would guess the ex experience vehicles are sold by the same route.

From looking at LR's site they still offer the privilege car purchase scheme which gives employees discounts on vehicles they make. Management get increased benefits. Few months ago I went on the factory tours at Solihull and the guide told us the privilege car purchase scheme continued when ford left, as it was considered good for the company/employees. There were some LR employee's in the tour group who asked about it. I spotted 2x FL2 Metropolis in black outside the old factory entrance which you exit from after the defender tour. These were said to be press vehicles when I asked.

I quizzed the dealer on future FL2's coming through and was told after the FL2 stopped production there was a bit of a gap before the DS started production. We think 2 or 3 months. So there should be a number of newish FL2's still coming through the "system". Some of the newer ones put up on LR's site were first registered Sept/Oct 2014 and built not long before that I guess. LR only make vehicles to order: end user purchase or dealer stock request. So there's no spares sitting around for months and months. No guarantees but likely there will be a flow FL2's continuing for a while longer.

From looking on the web it seems Thrifty is owned by the Scot Group. I can't see any LR vehicles available for hire from Thrifty currently. Paragon are a separate company and have a contract with LR as follows: "…renewal of its contract to manage the UK’s largest premium automotive employers’ fleet..." which I assume is still in operation at the moment.

I have been looking at another similar Metropolis FL2 and when asking if the vehicle was still for sale the dealer told me it was on lease to Scott Group Ltd (Thrifty car rental) which I think shows a level of honesty I appreciate. A lot of companies lease cars for their employees for 1, 2 or 3 years so it's no surprise just how many thousands of vehicles go through the "system" each week at auction as ex lease vehicles. Hippo's videos - Honorary Tratterer

I've noticed guy sal mon LR seem to have higher Metropolis prices than other dealers and they seem to disappear without dropping in price, or drop say £400 and they're gone. Are they a preferred dealer or is it the size/setup of their chain allowing them to sell vehicles quicker? Hippo's videos - Honorary Tratterer

It's probably a variety of factors but mainly scale. I bought mine from Guy Salmon (who are owned by Sytner incidentally), but only because they had what I was looking for. The larger the chain, the bigger the budget they will have for buying in vehicles, so they're probably able to shift more of them compared to the smaller chains and indies.

Regarding ex fleet cars.
Before I retired I had a string of company cars, roughly one every two years for over 20 years and did about 40k/year. I noticed that before I had a company car I was always very careful with my own and drove them fairly gently but when the company cars appeared I just drove them, never "run them in", never looked under the bonnet, had them serviced at the correct times, cruising at high speed all day faster cornering etc. However despite this the cars seemed to be just as reliable as when I was pootling around in my own car.

As for car prices have you noticed that there is some variation around the country dependent on how rich an area is perceived to be? This is especially true around London. 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
5 x FL2 4 manual + 1 auto
Now Discovery Sport P250 MHEV SE

Hippo, I asked what happened to Experience vehicles when I did the course. Apparently they
are not sold on. They go back to the factory for wear and tear investigation. 2013 Dynamic Santorini black
2011 XS Lago grey
2007 HLS Stornoway grey
sometimes towing an Elldis AVANTE 574.

I've been looking up ex lr experience cars on the mot history site and some exist and some don't. I guess it's a good way to get feedback on things that can go wrong. could be the case they're registrations are changed if sold. Hippo's videos - Honorary Tratterer

This one is 5 year old now, taxed, tested and insured. Ex LRE cars are sold on in the same way as ex fleet cars. The fleet cars are also used around the automotive trade and magazines for testing etc, I suspect they are the ones that get abused more.
Land Rover have a test facility at Gaydon, cars are put through their paces there, they also have an on site fleet that they can look at wear and tear. The stories bandied around about cars being crushed, taken apart etc are nonsense, the early test mules will be kept back and not sold. Can you imagine Land Rover really making a car to do 6-8000 miles with rigorous off road sessions and then say we can't possibly sell it because it's knackered?

Click image to enlarge

Have you ever noticed that with any new car they say that it has been tested in Death Valley at 50C, raced around test tracks all day, gone through extensive off road testing etc etc yet the real life problems are boring things like rear diff, wheel bearings, steering reservoir filters blocked with crap from dodgy steering racks , use of plastic gears in throttle body etc etc? It's almost like the VW emissions story where the tests don't mimic real life. 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
5 x FL2 4 manual + 1 auto
Now Discovery Sport P250 MHEV SE

What you are describing are Design Verification Tests, Production Verification Tests and Durability Tests.
They are obviously theoretical accelerated life tests.
As you can imagine, different components on a car have different life requirements so each component also has its own key life tests to pass too.
Most of the tests you mention only form part of the test plan for smaller components where data is used because the test is being run anyway.
There are certain major components that use these tests as their major test but not many.
Often, the purpose of the test is to verify lab tests and theoretical analysis.
Seeing how products fail is also very useful for designers so sometimes tests continue to failure.

Sometimes components fail because the test was under specified, sometimes because the design was poor, sometimes because other parts of the car change and therefore place more strain on the component that originally designed, sometimes from manufacturing variation and sometimes from cost reductions forced upon the designers after the design is finished.

Failures are not the same as cheating test results or testing something that is never actually released to the public.

BTW...Nothing wrong with plastic gears in throttle bodies. How do I know? I designed one and still have never seen a gear failure in my design. If plastic gears fail in a throttle body, it is not because they are plastic! There are very good reasons why metal gears are not used too. FL2 HSE Lux 2011 SD4 Gallway Green.
Fiesta 2014 Ttanium x 1.0 ecoboost - Fantastic 125 bhp 1.0l 3 cylinder turbo!
1976 Triumph Spitfire. Owned for 25 years Fully restored, magazine features - not quite standard
1985 Toyota MR2 MK1a. The oldest surviving example in the UK and one of only 5 left in 8B8 Blue

Well, thanks for that and I suppose we have established that you didn't design the FL2 throttle body as there are quite a few examples of ones with chewed up gears (we had one).

On the subject of testing, when I used to have company cars I would often get a new model early on and saw quite a few teething problems from everyday use. The worst was my Citroen XM which I had had for a few months and then on one very hot day (the hottest day of the year so far) it threw some severe wobblies like total loss of power, then backfiring then picking up and so on. I called the dealer who said "we know about this, Citroen UK have been inundated with support calls all afternoon from people in the south of England ". It got sorted eventually with a number of mods but how on earth does a car get released like that? Don't they have hot weather in France? The brochures of course, were full of how it been extensively tested in the desert etc. Oh Yea? 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
5 x FL2 4 manual + 1 auto
Now Discovery Sport P250 MHEV SE

The original vehicle has now turned up at a different dealer outside of the dealer group I was talking too. Not advertised yet but the grape vine tells me it's going to be put up for sale for a similar price to others on sale.

Also the rear spoiler. How are these fitted and can they be removed without leaving holes?

Thanks for your help. Hippo's videos - Honorary Tratterer