After owning a 90's Discovery which was the biggest POS ever, even after owning a nearly perfect Series II Disco, an LR3, and now a 16 LR4, all of which have been great, I'm still apprehensive and nervous anytime I get in the LR4 to go somewhere thinking and expecting the worst. Am I just psychologically blemished now for the rest of my life because of one bad experience? Except for the infamous brake light switch, my LR4 at 53,000 miles has had no issues. On the other hand, I have no qualms about going anywhere in either my Toyota truck or Mercedes cars as I have 100% confidence I'll get there. Not so with the LR. WTH?
From 06 LR3 to now 16 LR4 here as well with only 15.7k so far, and not gonna lie, feelings are mutual.
Always have this looming fear that a part can fail at any time, specially the air suspension components, anytime I am thinking about out of town, away from civilization into the desert drives without the company of friends in another vehicle.
Thats just the way it is with all LR products unfortunately with no realistic or any concrete efforts to address this customer experience and/or perception. No visible, lie-to-me and make-me-feel-good-about-my-purchase marketing efforts either.
In some of the Defender marketing videos, I did see one of the lead talking heads (not sure what his title was, customer experience personnel or product engineer, etc) talking about making sure that the Defender was durable.
But after touching and feeling out the SUV first hand and reading an article about the author' visual observation that quite a few of its suspension related components are most likely being pulled/repurposed from the D5 parts bin (not sure how true that is though), I for one have zero hopes of it being any reliable.
It would have been one thing if LR had gone a bit out of its way to communicate the reliability aspects of things in the new Defender to the potential customers, but they have not, and that tells me something.
If they really had put in some time and money into the reliability and durability areas, I am sure the bean counters there would have beaten the sh*t out of this effort of LR via marketing. But we dont hear and see none of that. So IMHO even this latest gen LR product is as reliable and durable as any of its recent gen products starting from the 2002 RR or LR3.
Having owned LR3 and 4 from 2006 to now, I could easily tell you that the build quality and parts quality have seriously deteriorated and declined over these past fourteen years in this, for the large part, same exact vehicle, making my 2006 LR3 the most reliable and best built LR vehicle ever out of the three that I have owned ('06 LR3, '13 and '16 LR4) over the last fourteen years.
