2017 Best Overall Towcar

Would have tried a Disco but always put off buying one by stories of questionable reliability, I simply cannot accept any unreliability in any car, so will not buy one.

TF

Never owned a Disco or driven one, but my life is also not controlled or led by stories. If I fancied one I would deal in facts.

Dave FL2,

OK  fact one. You find Toyota Landcruisers in every tough spot in the world. Rarely do you find the Land Rover equivalent.

Fact two  I have spent quite a lot of my time In the South Australian Outback.   There the Landcruiser is King. The idea of using a Land Rover out there is met with derision and shouts of don't be bl**** daft mate, we want to come home afterwards!  Seriously the LR has a very bad name out there, for serviceability, especially where the opportunities for maintenance are few & far between.

Fact three. How many disco owners do you know who can say that they have driven their disco's hard over 360,000 miles, and not had a single failure in all that time? The Landcruiser even carries two big 12v batteries under the bonnet to spread the load. They are a bit over engineered but thats how i like them. They will not let you down.

Thats what I mean about reliability, - bomb proof reliability.  My Toyota 's gave me that.  True they don't have all the modern cutting edge electrical gismo's, but what they have goes on doing it, come hell or high water. 

I don't have the same feeling about my ML which has failed me on a couple of occasions due to electrical faults in the locking system. I only keep it because it has such a great V6 3 litre engine. Better than the Toyota's 4 cylinder engine now that they have spoilt it, in order to lower emissions etc.

TF

I was always amused by the series of VW adverts on TV a while back.

The ones where some weedy guy is telling his mates "it sounds just like a volkswagon" or "it's just like a volkswagon" or similar.

The irony is that the sort of people who say these things are invariably........Skoda owners! 

TF

There you go again, you are in the past.

360000 miles, you are in 1990's and talking about Landcruisers and Discovery 1's that needed a repair truck in its wake. Freelander 1's that had a particular petrol engine that overheated and warped the head and block. Landrover had a bad name for reliability and you like to believe it is still the same by holding onto your 'stories'. No-one doubts Toyotas reliability in their older engines, unfortunately the newer ones are not so good.

Times change, as do cars and their manufacturers.

DaveFL2,

You might be right, who knows? But when things need to go right first time,  I  still want the confidence that owning and driving a totally reliable car gives me.  I am afraid that Land Rover still don't give me that.  Once I see them out there in the bad lands of the world, coping with little maintenance and back up, then I will perhaps buy one.  I still am in contact with all my mates in South Australia, and the Land Rover is still not acceptable out there as a real alternative to the Toyota or the Mitsubishi.  Even the Subaru is stated higher.

TF

Tiger fish l am with you, l may catch cold by going for the Santa FE and wished l bought another Shogun but the 300 quid road tax and the fuel economy won the day, plus her that has to be obeyed loved the SF. The disco wasn't in the running due to the high end price, l could be wrong on the reliability. Having said that a work colleague bought brand new range rover sport 80ks worth first six months a total of 6 weeks in the garage for one thing or another, never got to the other 6 month, cut his losses and swapped it for a Merc. We can here horror stories of all makes, so you takes your choice and live with the consequences. Having said that at least the car industry is more reliable than the caravan Industry

...now, if the Koreans started building caravans.....

Or even if Carlsberg did

Can't make a worse job than the industry we have

Funny how folk perceive things.
The 1991 model year (MY) Ford Escort was one of the worst cars ever made and was a typical example of a car made by a committee to a price. Virtually all the components failed at some point, even obscure things like seat runners, air vents, dash illumination and switch gear. The body pressings were truly dreadful with ripples along the top of the doors and the paint work was full of dirt. After about 18 months the car was revamped with nearly 1000 modifications. It was only a slight improvement. More improvements followed when it was face lifted around 1995 when it got to the "it's as good as it gets" stage. Even the front seat upholstery used to fail due to sharp edges on the frame cutting through the foam padding and then through the covers.
The Ford Escort was Britains best selling car for nearly 10 years!!!