This is what I have sent to LR about the fit for purpose issue over the Supercharged alloy wheels and how easily marked they have been.

I await a reply.

30th January 2006

Land Rover UK
Customer Relationship Centre
Browns Lane
Allesley
Coventry
CV5 9DR

Ref: Alloy wheel damage:


Dear Sirs,

I write to you in reference to my purchase of a Range Rover Sport Supercharged (RRS) in September 2005. My selling Dealer was Stratstone of Nottingham. I have now owned this vehicle from new for four whole months and being one of the earlier adopters to this brand new Land Rover vehicle, I feel I am best placed to comment from a user perspective on the car.

I am pleased to report than in the main, I am very happy with the vehicle, I have always liked the marque, indeed my very first car was a Land Rover. I replaced a BMW 5 Series saloon for the RRS as I required a comfortable motorway cruising car coupled with the ability to go off-road, primarily in the winter during the shooting season.

Being a fairly new vehicle in the Land Rover range, I expected some niggles along the way, which my dealer has corrected. These I have accepted as ‘bugs’ and ‘snags’ and I am fine with this to date. Recently however I have become extremely disappointed with a particular aspect of the vehicle’s design and fit for purpose.

Being a standard Supercharged model the car is equipped with the 20” alloy wheels on 275/40/R20 Continental Sport Contact tyres. Clearly these are a road biased tyre and not intended for serious off-road use, and as responsible owner I am aware of this. I have found to my surprise and extreme dismay that during a simple non-challenging off road drive through a grass field, the alloy wheels on my car have sustained substantial damage, mainly I believe due to the exposure of the alloy wheel faces, lack of protection from tyre choice and perhaps inferior quality of finish on the alloy wheels themselves.

I enclose a CD with some pictures I took this last weekend (January 28th 2006) when the aforementioned damage took place. As you can see from the picture titled “Gateway” this was not beyond the capabilities of the car, it was simply a muddy gateway in a grass field in what I would describe as ‘slippery’ conditions. Accompanying cars were a Discovery II and a Range Rover P38 on the day. You can see from the picture titled “Car Comparison” that the mud from the gateway has coated the tyres and alloys on my car and from this you can gauge the depth of the muddy ruts we drove through. This was nothing extreme. All the vehicles made it through the ruts with ease. However when I cleaned the car the following day I was shocked to find deep scratches around every rim, and across many of the faces of the spokes on all four wheels. I now have a four month old car with seriously damaged alloy wheels from simply driving across a grass field, which detract from the new look, are now susceptible to alloy corrosion due the scratching on the top layer of paint/lacquer, allowing the ingress of dirt, road salt etc. I had no idea that Land Rover vehicles were designed with such a degree of susceptibility to damage from such trivial conditions, it is after all supposed to be an off road vehicle is it not?

I believe that the way these wheels have been designed, with a very flat face that stands extremely proud to the tyre, has meant that during the off road driving the alloy itself has been scraped, scratched and abraded by the mud, leaving me with a set of four damaged wheels. Clearly I am FAR from happy about this. I had not expected within four months of spending £59,000 + on this car to be faced with a bill for refurbishment or replacement of the wheels. I ask myself how can the alloys be SO easily marked? They do seem very ‘precious’ compared to alloys I have had on previous cars.

Please refer to the four pictures I have enclosed of the damage to these wheels. Each one is labelled as positioned on the car, i.e OSR = Off Side Rear. I have focussed on the main damage done to each wheel in these pictures.

I firmly believe that Land Rover have produced a series of wheels for this car that are not designed fit for the purpose of ANY off road use in the 20” styles. I also believe that the cost of repair/replacement of these wheels should be borne by Land Rover and not myself. It is not practical to have a second set of wheels and tyres to swap out every weekend when you would like to take your “Best 4X4XFar” across a grassy field that may have some mud in it.

I have also learnt that the Land Rover Experience centres remove the 20” and 19” wheels from their Range Rover Sports as they too had encountered damage to the wheels from going off road, and now use 18” alloys instead. This only confirms my suspicions.

I would like Land Rover to know that I am a senior member of the UK’s largest on-line community of Range Rover Sport members (www.rrsport.co.uk) and as such have an influence on many potential buyers of this car in the UK and beyond. I am giving Land Rover the opportunity to make amends in this situation and to show that customer service is not dead as we all seem to expect it to be these days.

I would like this matter to end here with my letter to yourselves and the accompanying evidence in the photos of the wheels which I believe, are not fit for purpose. Under the Sales of Goods Act I believe I have a case to argue.

I welcome your comments and look forward to your response, you are more than welcome to come and see the car and visit the site where this all took place.

Yours sincerely




Adam Wormleighton
Address as Above
Enc: CD with Photo evidence L319 D4 HSE

1998 110 TUM HS FFR Hard Top XD WOLF

1982 Series 3 SWB

Good letter - I bet they come up with some excuse. Best of luck.


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WELL SAID THAT MAN 
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I wish you well. However, I would be very surprised if LR cough up for a new set of alloys. I suspect in the future they may well produce a warning in the manual about going off-road with 19" and 20" wheels. Matt
-------------------------------------------
RRS ownership for 1 yr, then D3 for 2 yrs. Then cut back to old bangers and working my way back up through two Peugeots in 6 months. Now got Saab 9-5 2.3t and enjoying the performance!

Valid points all very well made. Let's look forward to their response! 

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Excellent letter RRUK keep us up to speed with any further developments. Sorry to hear your wheels got damaged. I hope LR cough up to refurb them at the very least.

One thing i did notice though, on that video clip off top gear when jeremy clarkson took on the tank in the SC RRS, if you look at the clip closely, when JC is actually hooning it around in the field, the car is riding on 19" HSE wheels, yet before they start with the physical activities its riding on the normal 20" SC wheels. Wonder why this was?

For the same reason they do it at the LREs I expect... someone mentioned the wheels would get screwed if he chucked it about in a fight with a tank. Maybe the car handles better offroad on the smaller rims too? 

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mpwox11 wrote:

I wish you well. However, I would be very surprised if LR cough up for a new set of alloys. I suspect in the future they may well produce a warning in the manual about going off-road with 19" and 20" wheels.

They'll probably put an unremovable sticker on the wheels! 2005 Zambezi TDV6 - Gone but not forgotten
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WELL SAID!Hope they come up with a decent, professional answer! RRS S/C,Bonatti Grey,Ebony Interior,Lined Oak Finish, Rear Lock Dif, DVD,Sunroof,ACC

Very annoyed wrote:

They'll probably put an unremovable sticker on the wheels!

Frankly, I think the S/C Sports are for ROAD USE ONLY. Anyone who thinks they can go off road in mud and ruts with 20" wheels is one fry short of a happy meal. Look at a wheel on a Defender or a Discovery 1. Then look at a RRS S/C wheel. What part of this don't you understand? '06 RRS Giverny/Alpaca
'97 Discovery
My Rover Site -- My Photo Site

Steady now, Jeffrey. Let's not come crashing in through the windows with our first post to the forum... The point being made here is that the alloys supplied to you by LR appear not to be suitable for offroad use of the lightest nature (i.e. driving across a muddy field). 

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Well said, shmoogle.  Malaysia Boleh!
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Jeffrey wrote:

Frankly, I think the S/C Sports are for ROAD USE ONLY. Anyone who thinks they can go off road in mud and ruts with 20" wheels is one fry short of a happy meal. Look at a wheel on a Defender or a Discovery 1. Then look at a RRS S/C wheel. What part of this don't you understand?

Sorry for being a bit too direct, but truly offroading a Land Rover is my relative point of view. If one visits my Rover site (or the pic below), then one will understand. Schmoogle, it seems that your statement agrees with my point completely, unless you were simply re-stating what I had said. While I still own and use my red Disco on seriously challenging and rough trails, I also own a Sport, and hope to slowly close the huge gap between their respective offroad capabilities as aftermarket accessories become available and my nerve increases! Meahwhile, I stand by my belief that the S/C's with only 3 inches (7.5 cm) of rubber between the rim and the ground were meant only for highway, and hardpacked smooth dirt roads.

 '06 RRS Giverny/Alpaca
'97 Discovery
My Rover Site -- My Photo Site