Without a doubt buying any foreign car costs more to maintain, and of those the Land Rovers are on the high side of those expense-wise.
Egrizzle, I know I'm on the lucky side and do feel for everybody that hasn't been so lucky. I've certainly been on the "empty your pockets" side with my 2 P38s and 2 county's in the past, probably spent enough to have paid for my LR3, lol. There were people (youngsters) I wouldn't sell my old rovers too because I was sure they didn't know what they were getting in to.
Bottom line is it's definitely a crap shoot. I think there are probably more 'good' ones than one would think if they only relied on info from forums. As an aside, I bought a BMW motorcycle pre-internet, pre-forums and have spent $200 (my own fault not changing brake fluid) on it in 14 years. I have always just assumed they are completely bulletproof. Had I read the BMW forums like I do now, I may never have gotten one. They sound like the most finicky, expensive motorcycles made.
But you've got to be ready for the chance that things will get spendy or you will end up miserable. Generally I've bought mine with about 25k miles on them and sell at about 70k. I'm hoping this one will stay in the family a lot longer than that, but if it stops behaving, it's outta here.