Eaters wrote:

One other thing I forgot to say ( it almost needs no comment) but of course it still gives me the grin factor when I drive the TDV8. I don't recall specific comments from the electric boys with regard to "fun to drive". Any thoughts?

I grin every time I drive past a LR Dealer or Filling Station and think how much time and money I've saved over the last 2.5 years

No - the Outlander isn't as much fun as my last RRS but it's stress free and sooooo cheap to buy/run  Wanted a Series 2 LR since childhood but previously owned MY16 Disco Sport HSE TD4 Auto, MY13 RR Sport Black Edition TDV6 Auto, MY10 RR Sport HSE TDV6 Auto, 2007 Freelander 1 Freestyle TD4 Soft Top, 2009 Freelander 2 GS TD4 Auto, 2007 Freelander 2 GS TD4, 2004 Disco 2 Metropolis Auto, 2002 Disco 2 GS, 2000 Freelander 1 SE TD4 SW

Still hoping for a S2 one day!

Eaters wrote:

I don't recall specific comments from the electric boys with regard to "fun to drive". Any thoughts?

No, my XC90 isn’t as fun to drive as the last RRS when it comes to handling. No surprises though, as Tim pointed out, it isn’t supposed to. It is fun to drive in other ways ... the petrol engine is capable of producing 303 bhp and the electric motor 87 bhp so it is quick. There’s no lag either when you put your foot down as it isn’t diesel  Current: Volvo XC90 T8 Inscription Pro PHEV with some optionals on top
Gone: MY16 RRS2 3.0 SDV6 Autobiography Dynamic, Carpathian Grey & Santorini Black Sliding Pano/Ebony & Ivory 2 Tone
Gone: MY13 RRS 3.0 SDV6 HSE Black Edition, Orkney Grey/Ivory
Gone: MY09 RRS 2.7 TDV6 HSE, Santorini Black/Almond

Hmm. Thanks guys. Food for thought. So it sounds like a bit of head over heart and as such is a compromise. Well life is like that! When I look at how much I've spent on maintenance and fuel, my head says I'm a total plonker. But heart says, the RRS is my hobby and as such I can throw a bit of cash at it for the feel good factor I get back from it when all is going well.

At my age (semi retired) the income doesn't go up but the bills do. So there will come a time when a more frugal lifestyle may be necessary. It's good to know that when that time arrives I can look at things like reliability and (Muddy's) 80mpg as against my 25mpg and know I have some room to manoeuvre. Just added 80mpg to my costs spreadsheet and if I'd had 80mpg for the time I've had the car (38,000 miles and 3 years), I'd have an extra £5600 in my pocket just from fuel alone! Robin
2008 Range Rover Sport TDV8
Gone:
Jaguar S-Type V8 4.2 Sport
MGZTT 190 2.5

Factor in the cost of a “full tank” of electricity for my Countryman costs me 90p for 20 miles of ‘fuel ‘ if I charge at peak rates and a lot less on off peak at home and £20 A YEAR regardless of how many charges I do if I use my Chargepoint Scotland Card for Scotland’s vast network of public chargers, and I can also utilise my FIT solar panel array to pay/charge the car at home, then the incentive to drive as much as possible in pure electric mode goes through the roof. The Countryman has JUST enough range in winter to get me from my house in the sticks into the local town of Stirling to go shopping and a free recharge to get home (my car takes an hour to recharge to 100% on a normal public charger and 3 hours on a 13 amp domestic plug) then my fuel costs have fallen through the floor BUT I have to counter that by admitting that the Countryman (and most other PHEVs) is hopeless to use for the runs I used to do regularly in the RRS - Home to London and back, home to Southampton and back 4 or five times a year, so I now take the plane or train which while quicker are more exoensive and inconvenient than driving an RRS with an efficient Diesel engine and then there is airport/ station parking to factor in too. The Countryman’s 35lt Petrol tank and 20 mile real world mileage on battery don’t get you to London with as few stops as the RRS did! So really for 40% of the miles I did in the RRS the Countryman isn’t a good replacement, but I make up for that with the very cheap motoring if I run the Countryman in electric mode as much as possible in local driving. There are also things like insurance is about 20% of what I was paying for the Sport and VED is considerably less annually. I also don’t have any servicing costs in the first 4 years according to the service meter in the trip computer! But then I had a service agreement for the RRS........ it’s all swings and roundabouts and what you want a car to do. I still have my Defender which on a cost per mile basis is a money pit BUT it is very cheap to run, service and repair, it doesn’t guzzle diesel and does less than 1000 miles a year 80% of which are where there are no roads at all. The mini certainly couldn’t handle that scenario! Here’s hoping that the Defender replacement can give me one car that can handle the work two do for me just now because I would buy a PHEV Defender and reduce to one car.
There is one lesson that I have learned from my short ownership of a PHEV, I wasted my money buying one and could easily have gone straight to a real milk float, a BEV (Nissan Leaf [yuk]/ iPace [sooooo expensive to buy and too new tech for JLR] or a Tesla S/X [ could only afford a 2nd hand one of them]) as now with the most recent battery tech they have killed the worry of range anxiety with the 250-300 miles ranges of the latest cars, lets face it, how many times a year do most people do that long a trip not many. The latest BEV’s only need as much fuelling up as an ICE car, granted it takes twice as long to fill the ‘tank’ on a rapid charger, but that is also diminishing quickly with faster chargers. 2020 Pangea Green 1st Edition D240 New Defender 110 is here and loving it
2018 Melting Silver Mini Countryman PHEV - soon to be replaced
2015MY Corris Grey SDv6 HSE Dynamic, the best car I have ever owned, totally reliable only a cou0le of rattles in 3 years, now no longer in my care
Also in my garage is a 1996 TDi300 Defender 90 County HT made into a fake CSW