SCB
Member Since: 08 Mar 2018
Location: South Coast
Posts: 1
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| MY18 - A 100% Positive Review | |
Hi
Forum newbie here, and this is my first post ...
I am as new to the JLR brand as can be. Having never owned anything related to it before, I have no prior experience with SUVs, JLR, Range Rovers, Land Rovers or anything even remotely similar.
I wanted to write about my own personal experience as a brand new JLR customer and first time RRS owner. I may ramble a bit, so apologies in advance, but please bear with me ...
I've had my current car for 4 years, it's a 2001 3.2Ltr Mercedes SLK. It's tired (166k), has rusty body work, leaks a little bit when it rains hard and is generally close to the end of its life. Mechanically however, everything works without issue, and it is the most reliable car I've ever had. With the exception of a new battery, it's never let me down, not even once! But needs must, and time moves on ... I've been looking at alternatives for about a year trying to decide whether I continue with older cars, newer approved used cars or something brand new from a main dealer. Through a lot of hard work and sacrifice over the past few years, I'm extremely fortunate to have earned that choice and with my personal circumstances the way they are I eventually decided that I'd treat myself to something brand new, and the search then began ... Over the past year or so I've looked at and test driven a Mercedes AMG C63s Coupe, some BMW M3 / M4s, an Audi RS5, Jaguar F-Types (V6 / V8 ) and various Porsches etc (not all models I hasten to add, only those within my budget), but for some reason they just didn't do it for me. Now a few years ago that would have been a very different storey, but I'm 40 now, have different priorities and things generally (as the saying goes) are not what they used to be ... For example, the relentless war on speed, the (poor) quality of the road network and obviously how busy everywhere is these days (that said, I do have a Ducati Panigale for when I fancy a bit of fun). I've looked at Range Rover Sports before and been through the on-line configurator a few times, but I'd never actually been to a showroom to see one as I never really thought it would be a viable choice, so in November during another on-line configurator session I thought I'd just go and have a proper look at some. My local Harwoods dealership was only about 30 minutes away from me (Lewes, East Sussex), so I drove over one afternoon, wandered around the showroom for a while and checked out what was available, and I have to say, I was very impressed! After discussing what I was looking for with a member of the Sales Team, I ended up taking out an SDV6 MY17 RRS AB demonstrator on a very brief test drive as it was late in the afternoon and we were starting to get short on time that day. Upon returning back we discussed some options and I listed some of my "deal-breakers" in terms of specification requirements. It turned out that there was only 1 pre-registered MY17 RRS in the whole of the UK that had the exact specification I was after, so I put a small holding deposit on it there and then to avoid someone else purchasing it. I had not visited the dealership with the intention of actually making any sort of purchase, only to look and see what was available, so when walking out I was even surprised at myself for making such a quick decision, but during the test drive, I just clicked with the RRS. The refinement, the driving position, the quality of the interior, the comfort and surprisingly even the performance was more than sufficient, basically I liked everything! I couldn't fault it and it just made me feel like none of the aforementioned vehicles did.
As the RRS was so different to anything I'd previously owned, I wanted to make sure it fitted into my day to day lifestyle, so a couple of weeks later I contacted the dealership and asked if I could have an extended test drive of a similar specification RRS before we proceeded any further, as a quick 20 minute test drive along a dual carriageway wasn't sufficient to make a cira 90k decision on, to which they said yes. I won't go into the details, but the extended evaluation was enough to convince me that my deposit was correctly placed, however when I returned the RRS back to the dealership after the extended evaluation, I decided that as the MY18 was only a few months away, I'd rather move my deposit onto one of those and take advantage of the mid-cycle upgrades, this then allowed me to spec the RRS completely to my taste.
Now the bit that I'm guessing most of you may be more interested in ... My experience with the MY18, so far ... After reading the feedback on here from some of the long-time forum members and more experienced owners, I was starting to get pretty concerned with what was about to arrive. There were virtually no positive reviews and nearly all MY18 owners seemed to be having a lot of the same issues (even over in the US), with some being rejected completely! I was due to collect mine on March 7th, and then on March 2nd, this thread appeared: http://www.rrsport.co.uk/forum/topic50342.html I forwarded it to my dealer who read through and was surprised that there were so many issues, I asked him to review other threads on here as well, just so he could see how unhappy some other MY18 customers were with their new purchases. He did a great job of assuring me that they would obviously do all they could to ensure that there were no issues and the handover would be as smooth as possible. Collection day arrived and at exactly the same time, so did a new software update for the navigation system which was applied in the morning leaving the afternoon free to complete the handover. I had a good look over the RRS, checked all the electrics (as much as I could anyway), the seats, the body work, the engine and everything was as far as I could tell, perfect! My dealer had even painted the callipers Red for me as the MY18 SDV6 doesn't have painted callipers, not even as an option!
I took the RRS out for its (our) first drive last night (March 7th), and it was just amazing! I had a little work to do that evening which required me driving up to near Heathrow airport and by the time I was finished and home (after a few purposeful detours) I'd put just shy of 170 trouble free miles on it.
I'll detail the basic specification of mine here:
MY18 RRS Dyn AB SDV6
Carpathian Grey
Ebony / Ebony Interior
Grand Black Veneer
22" 5004 Wheels in Silver
Drive Pro Pack
Vision Assist Pro Pack
Activity Key
Solar Attenuating Windscreen
Privacy Glass
Black Sliding Panoramic Contrast Roof
First thoughts ...
The infotainment / navigation - This is always going to be subjective depending on what your expectations and requirements are, which vehicle you're coming from and other vehicles that you are comparing against. For me, it's awesome! It does everything I need, and then some. I find it fast, intuitive and easy to set up. Sure, there are some small quirks, but nothing I found so far that detracts from the overall experience or usability, and besides, what manufacturer doesn't have these.
The Lights - The headlights are just something else! I opted for the Pixel Laser ones and they are absolutely amazing watching them work with oncoming traffic, or traffic that you're following. Watching the individual beams move around reflective objects is incredible! With the lights on Full Auto and the main-beam being on nearly all the time, I didn't get flashed by any oncoming traffic once! Now, I believe there's a lot of criteria you have to meet to get the actual "Laser" components to engage, and I'm absolutely sure that these didn't come on once last night (despite my best efforts to find a dark road with no lights or reflective objects whilst travelling at over 50mph (must try harder)) but I'm looking forwards to seeing these operate!
The Seats / Interior - I "believe" the MY18 AB has slightly different seats to the MY17(?) (feel free to correct me on that). The quality and comfort are fabulous! The driving position perfect! The 22-way seats once setup are more comfortable than my sofa at home (not sure what that says about my sofa? ...).
The HUD & Adaptive Cruise - These were 2 of my original deal-breakers when discussing the MY17 that I originally put the deposit on. I used them both last night and the HUD "appears" to have had an upgrade over the MY17 and now offers even more information. The Adaptive Cruise with Queue Assist, well, that's just awesome!
That's as much information as I can give so far, but I'll be out in it later today that's for sure!
I'm sorry to read about other members negative experiences and sympathise with you all. These are expensive vehicles and we do have certain expectations when purchasing them. I do feel however, that our dealer of choice can play a MASSIVE part in the overall experience, and I really would like to say a huge "thank you" to Harwoods of Lewes who have honestly done such an amazing job looking after me through the entire process from start to finish, their Customer Service so far has been nothing short of perfection!
I thought it was worthwhile to write about my experience to help set others minds at ease that not all MY18 RRS's have issues and that if you communicate with your dealer well in advance of collection highlighting the issues that are unfortunately being experienced by others with as much information as possible, they can do any additional checks to ensure that these issues do not impact you before, during or after you take collection. As said above, I forwarded the link to that specific thread for them to review and if needed take any required action. Maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones, but there's no doubt in my mind that my dealer played their part in making my experience a 100% positive one 
Ben
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Thu Mar 08 2018 5:23pm
