Hi everyone,

I am currently in the market for my first RRS and I'm looking for some advice / guidance, if you can help

Criteria:

HSE 3.0 SDV6
Yulong white
2017 -2018
£45K, max on PCP - open to comments and criticisms on this as I've never done finance deals before.
LR approved warranty so will be bought from LR dealer.

I've heard a lot of horror stories about RRS's, but also know people that have had / currently have them without any bother.

What are the key things to look for? What should I avoid?
Warranty is an absolute must so any advice on further extending and what it includes / excludes would be helpful too.

Read plenty about regular oil changes (including gearbox at 60k) after reading about crankshafts snapping!
Air suspension can also be problematic I believe. What can be done to prolong it?

Thanks in advance.

I can't speak for the V6 but it sounds like you 've done a bit of reading on here anyway already. This is a good place to find all the moans and groans but remember not many members post how good and reliable any car is on any forum. Within the RRS community there are many who swear by the reliability of their cars and have no issues. I suppose the key thing for the sort of car you are thinking of is to get a really water tight warranty (is there such an animal?). Also I'd rely on your gut feeling as well. If it doesn't feel right then walk away! Lastly I'd still recognise that these are very complicated cars which when they go wrong, can cost an arm, a leg and various other body parts as well, so a war chest in reserve would be no bad thing. Why do people buy them? Because on the other side of the equation, they are just fantastic.

I am sure others will respond with more details for the model you are thinking of. Good luck Robin
2008 Range Rover Sport TDV8
Gone:
Jaguar S-Type V8 4.2 Sport
MGZTT 190 2.5

I’ve had a few PCPs, they can get you a better car, but they do force you into a decision when finished, and you may not end up with much of a deposit at the end.

I had one for current car, but only because they offered a £3k discount. I paid it off with a bank loan after a few weeks and saved another couple of grand. Think carefully about it for the end point, if you onl6 have a small amount there, particularly with the current climate and phasing out of petrol/diesel models, who knows what’s going to happen with prices.

Reliability seems to be pot luck, there are 3.0 litre crankshaft problems, but in overall numbers for the engine, it is still quite small.

Extended warranty excludes the crank as a known defect, under warranty, LR will normally cover it if you have main dealer history, after the year warranty it is really pot luck with what they will pay. It’s a lot harder now warranty direct have stopped selling.

Gearboxes really need flushing around 60-70k miles.

Far more important that frequent changes is keeping the correct level. Joined the X5 45e club
1994 Defender 90 300 tdi

PlatinumFridge wrote:

LR approved warranty so will be bought from LR dealer..

Hi,
from memory there are 3 LandRover warranties

L/R manufacturers warranty cars up to 3 years old and is L/R
L/R extended warranty following on from new by owner paying premium and is L/R
L/R Approved warranty offered by dealers which is Not L/R but 3rd party that L/R use

confusing and the 3rd option can reject stuff your would not expect then L/R May offer a contribution (or not!)

We have had 3xRRS now and all were good, maintenance yes but nothing fell off

 Porsche Cayenne 2022
gone Porsche Cayenne 2020
gone Corris Grey HSE Dynamic 2016
gone Ipanema HSE lux 2010
gone Rimini HSE 2005
!!

I’ve had 4 PCPs and am now on my 5th. For the first three at the end the equity always grew from the time before. On the 4th it mostly all disappeared - down to £2k. Maybe I was lucky with the first few. I tend to think the 4th was due to diesel falling out of favour (traded in a diesel X5). current: RRS HST P400 engine ( 2021) Hakuba silver

I very much agree with what has been said. I'm on my second RRS now and both, one diesel, one petrol, have been reliable with no serious issues. Software can be quirky, usually the old solution of turning it off and after a 10/15 minutes, turn it on again works. These are expensive cars to run but probably no more so than an equivalent Audi/BMW/Mercedes. As for PCP don't expect any capital in the car at the end of the deal. I used PCP on my diesel to protect myself in the event of the used value falling out of bed, the cost of interest on the deal I considered to be the price of an insurance premium. The petrol car also went on PCP as I got a fairly significant kick back from taking it out.
One measure I've used on cost is to look at how much the payments are on HP, if they look to expensive them then the car is probably too expensive for you. I'm certainly not suggesting that this is your position. Another rule i was given years ago was not to buy a car that costs more than 30% of your annual salary.

After all the doom and gloom they are brilliant cars, mine makes me happy every time I use It.

all the best
Tim Tim
RRS sold and replaced with a Skoda Kodiaq after appalling RR Dealer experience and LR inability to supply new cars in any sort of reasonable time frame..

Hi,

On my fourth RRS (see signature block).

Never kept one past 3yr point (yet) but as I’ve just retired, this one’s a keeper.

Never use PCP or finance, we use an old concept of saving for what we want and then paying for it.

No serious issues that weren’t fixed by our dealer - one turbo and one rear diff, both replaced under the warranty at the time.

We have purchased 11 of our 15 Land Rovers from the same dealer. It makes a BIG difference from the stories I’ve read. I have recommended friends & colleagues and all are happy with the service & treatment by the dealer.

Scrumps Somerset - Where the apples do grow and the cider do flow!
2021 Defender 90 D250 HSE in Tasman with white roof.
24MY D300 AB - Verasine Blue - 😀
19MY SDV6 AB - Byron Blue - Gone
17MY D5 SDV6 HSE - Firenze Red - Gone
16MY SDV6 AB -Aruba Silver - Gone
13.5MY SDV6 "HSE Black" - Baltic Blue - Gone
10MY TDV8 HSE Galway Green - Gone
14MY D4 HSE in Scotia Grey - Gone
05 TD5 D90 CSW in Cairns Blue

Last edited by scrumps on Tue Mar 02 2021 12:42pm. Edited 1 time in total

Best piece of advice is to find a decent Land Rover specialist independent garage and use them for servicing etc. Sure, any warranty stuff will have to go to a dealership during the manufacturer's warranty period, but after that even LR's warranty (which is actually a third party one) will cover warranty work at non-dealership garages. I might suggest that using an indie will save enough money that you won't need a warranty to pay for the odd thing that goes wrong.

Dealership service departments are the worst thing about the ownership experience. Most of the horror stories about having to keep going back to get things fixed are down to the service departments being, frankly, atrocious.

My first RRS, a TDV8, was always needing something doing to it. I kept taking it back to the LR dealership as it had a "LR warranty" (the one that isn't actually LR at all). And they kept messing it up and then other stuff would go wrong. Heck, they even broke the steering rack one time - and used my warranty to replace it! I was close to chucking it in and moving to a different brand. Then I took it to a specialist LR indie. And suddenly - and it was almost instant - the thing became reliable. Just needed servicing and the usual wear and tear stuff doing. Took me all the way to 175k+ miles.

My current RRS has been looked after by the same garage since I bought it with about 50k miles on it. And so far, so good with the clock recently going through 115k miles. Again, it's needed the usual wear and tear stuff. I've been unlucky to suffer an inlet manifold crack (a known, but not common failure) and a cross-over pipe split (again, a known failure on the V6 diesels).

Both of mine have been used fully - both as my daily drivers doing 150+ miles a day, both towing a 2.5t horse trailer, both going off road, both been down to Spain - and they're great cars to cover big miles in. As an example of them doing "stuff", I recently helped tow some tree branches out of a ditch so they could be chopped for fire wood. Mine's currently a "bit muddy" when pigeon shooting after I stupidly tried to go along a field margin that was a lot wetter than I realised. Self-recovered but I might have thrown a bit of mud about in the process! They really are great all round vehicles.

So, buy the best you can and then treat it to a decent indie garage. And you'll grow to love the beast (the RRS, not the indie! )  2012 SDV6 - it's missing a couple of cylinders
2008 TDV8 - it was a labour of love and is much missed

There is a lot of good advice above and particularly that reliability is often related to who looks after it. I am on my third Sport, the latest having just arrived so too early to comment on reliability, but of the others the worst was a broken gear selector that stranded the car and required it to be towed, in France, at Christmas!

To be fair it was a small plastic part that broke that required the whole selector to be replaced, under warranty. LR assist were superb and eventually got me a decent sized 4x4 as a courtesy car, not easy in the Alps at Christmas, and got mine fixed the day before we headed home so all was good.

Other than the above nothing major has failed. All items that have needed to be fixed were dealt with under warranty and my dealer has always been very effective at getting these through without issue. Servicing by them has been decent and whilst expensive, about what I expect for a car of this type. I also have only owned petrol 4.2/5.0 supercharged models so can't speak of the diesels but it would appear that the V8 diesels are more reliable than the V6 versions but I think it is inevitable that cars of this complexity will have some problems over the years. My experience has been that these are in the main very well engineered bits of kit, sometimes let down by some penny pinching here and there and electrical systems that have been thrown together in the dark!

As someone said above, despite all of the problems that are known about (which is not something that is unique to LR products) people still come back to them because they are simply fabulous to own and drive. I could have bought more or less anything to replace my last one but chose another Sport because frankly none of the competition offer the breadth of ability, comfort and performance that my S/C has, or an engine that will go down in history as one of the last true greats of the ICE era. Enjoy them while we still can! 2021 5.0 S/C Autobiography In Carpathian Grey, Ivory leather and dark Suedecloth Headlining, deployable tow bar and fridge!

Hi all,

Thanks very much for all your sound advice.

Reliability is probably my biggest concern, however hearing that so many of you have never had any issues and the fact the car has an extended warranty makes a huge difference.

Oh! I took the plunge.

2017 Fuji white with 10K miles on its way to me this week!

Already booked in to have it ceramic coated / paint correction detail.

Can't wait!!

Where are you taking it for the paint Joined the X5 45e club
1994 Defender 90 300 tdi

Don't forget the forum rules - if there are no photos then it didn't happen!

We know what these cars look like but everyone likes to look at what people are buying.  2012 SDV6 - it's missing a couple of cylinders
2008 TDV8 - it was a labour of love and is much missed

Dave-t wrote:

Where are you taking it for the paint

Dave-t wrote:

Where are you taking it for the paint

Collecting mine on Wednesday next week... photos will be posted  current: RRS HST P400 engine ( 2021) Hakuba silver