I agree with you, Hayseed, in that at the heart of it its really a matter of trade-offs, personal needs, taste, and what changes/revisions one does or does not perceive as advancements.
These are just my personal opinions and thoughts as far as comparing a redesign (which supposedly LR is selling to me as an evolution of its prior version) with the original LR4.
The IBF:
IBF gave you and I the benefits of both ladder frame and unibody (the monocoque' stiffness and the ladder frame' strength), but without any of their disadvantages, because as standalone platforms the two do have their disadvantages. And that was really the beauty of IBF, that with integrating the two together, both platforms not only complemented each other but actually negating their disadvantages as well.
Plus, IBF allowed for the isolation from the road/drivetrain harshness, and the four corners and the steering column became the only source for the needed surface feedback. And thats what made for that carved-out-of-stone rock solid and well-planted feel that LR3 had shocked us all with in a pleasant way, even with thost ****** OEM GoodYears. That should have been the way to go forward for all serious offroading luxury SUVs and trucks.
But sadly, aside from devoting one page with a line about this tech on the LR3/4 brochure, LR never actually invested any effort in marketing that great tech of theirs, making the potential customer aware of it. Also, that one liner was removed from the latest 2016 LR4 brochure. I am pretty sure I noticed it was absent from the '14 or '15 brochures as well.
Things catch on due to customer awareness causing competition. Proprietary TR versions began to appear in the jeeps, the toyotas, and the lexuses only because of that as they were forced to do so.
LR did spend some money on that funny ad campaign about LR4 being safe ("You will feel safe inside..." See the links below) but in those ads they never mentioned even once what was the actual reason and why one would/should feel safer inside an LR4 vs any other SUV. I mean a consumer would not know the reason unless explained the difference with a demo of the ***** IBF or animation or something.
If I was in the market for an SUV and naturally did not know anything about the IBF, watching those ads I would have been like, is LR4 safe just like any other SUV on the market because it is an SUV after all and that all SUVs are bigger than cars, sit higher on the ground, and therefor are safer for my kids? And if thats the case then why shoudn't I look into other SUVs, perhaps with a better reliability track record? Whats so different about LR4 that makes it safer than others?
Willing to bet, no LR dealer/sales rep was ever educated by LR to answer that question.
It was LR' job to educate their sales reps and potential customer that LR4 is safer because its built a certain way making it the only SUV on the planet with such and such qualities. If Subaru can advertise the crap out of their asymmetrical AWD system, so could have LR about their IBF.
That ad campaign, funny as hell, but failed to educate the modern potential customer who needs good reasons for choosing one make/model over the rest, specially when your reliability track record is not exactly near top ten.
Not a single demo of their supposedly legendary TR or 4WD system at LR booth at the LA auto show last year or this year. But right next door, Subaru was still busy showcasing their unique AWD system and their Boxer engine tech on flat panels with educated reps on the floor, who certainly knew a thing or two about their lineup.
But one thing that the LR booth was plenty filled with, was the Bling. Aah the bling of those 22 inch rims, those flashy jags, the autobiography editions, the velars, etc, etc. There was an SVO offroad version of D5 there parked on a tilted platform in a corner up front, but it was quite overshadowed by the rest of the prevailing atmosphere with not much attention around it, not that I noticed at least as I took some pics in the hopes that I may begin to like it. Maybe it had crowd around it earlier in the day when I wasnt there.
The only thing in the booth that reminded me of anything that had anything to do remotely with anything AWD, let alone 4x4 or lockers and such (we dont talk about lockers and all that nonsense at LR anymore, ha) was that original oval Land Rover Logo, ha. That green logo looked a bit sad to me.
The TR:
As for the TR tech, with all due respect to Tata's LR, TR2 should really have been TR3 by now because its been almost fourteen years since it was first introduced with LR3 in 2004.
TR1 should have been revised and re-introduced as TR2 with LR4 reveal in 2010. Five years are more than enough for a tech to develop and be revised and refined. And in 2017, seven years later, D5 should have appeared with TR3.
But again, that is exactly what happens when you become lazy as a car maker and stop innovating and no one is guiding you as to how to market your own tech and milk it to death and when you are left at the mercy of decision making process by suits whose sole purpose/personal careers target is to be on the cover of CEO magazine by increasing the sales numbers vs creating better products. There is definitely a difference there. And many original companies have come and gone as a result of this type of alternative goal oriented mindset.
CEOs move on from one to the next company very often and with flying colors as high sales is the barometer for them being "good". But the long term damage that they sometime cause to the brand and products they leave behind is not always immediately noticeable or repairable.
So I dont know what panzy is running the show at Tata' LR right now but they sure dont seem to be any innovation-driven suit.
By now the term "Terrain Response" should have been synonymous with all LRs. Its a tech that LR had invented to begin with. LR should have owned the hell out of it via marketing/ads/demos and educational material on the web and demos at shows. They should have associated TR with "Safety" in any weather/terrain.
And then to the customer, all other makers would have appeared to simply have followed LR's lead with their own inferior versions of the original TR. To this customer the "original and clearly the better", TR, would have been available in an LR only.
This kinda stuff goes a long way. There is a good reason why Sony still carries their quarter of a century old term "XBR" signal processing for its top flagship models. Customers know that XBR means excellent picture quality that XBR is only available with a Sony and therefore pay big bucks for the tech and brand.
But when you are only interested in "selling" vs creating then you blend and bland you right in
To me, LR3 was the result of the LR design team engineering the **** out of D2 to bring the D2 into the modern world of better ride quality of independent corners and offroad ability with finesse, ease, and control. Hence the TR, the IBF, the cross linked independent setup that all of us consumers benefited from, and all those awards. And that only happens when you are focused on creating a better product, and thats when the consumer wins.
The snow mode button in a Toyota Highlander would most likely not have existed today if it weren't for LR3' original TR.
D5 should have followed in the same tradition but unfortunately, and to me at least, it has turned out to be the direct result of the feedback from those focus groups consisting of you know who
Its a direct result of trying to "sell" more by blending in. Hence the thinner steering wheel and the Explorer like C pillar which again, some maybe ok with.
Personally, I just expect slightly higher levels/standards of design and engineering from a maker that prefers to be called a luxury/prestige brand, specially if I am being asked for $70k. Or else, I have got plenty other choices to choose from if I just want to "blend" and "bland" right in with the rest, and at a much reasonable cost, that is. But thats just me.
