Unreliability is the bane of Range Rovers

Greetings JM,

We’ve all heard and read about how the Range Rover suffers from poor reliability ratings; is this a perception or is it true. How good is the 2014 model Range Rover when it comes to reliability and would you advise someone to buy a used model.

Clinton

Hi Clinton,

It is true the Range Rover’s biggest failing is its being as reliable as a thatched roof on a bakery. This has applied to all generations from inception: the Classic had a rusty chassis and collapsible trim, the P38 had wonky electronics and a suspension that was neither here nor there, the L322, which was meant to be a renaissance vehicle under BMW’s definitive Teutonic tutelage (which it was, in so many ways), ate its own brake discs... The Sport had a terrible diesel V6 in its first generation, and they all suffered issues with their air suspensions.

The new crop’s foibles are well hidden, but not from this little eye of mine. I drove the L405 in Morocco back in late 2012 before it hit the showroom floor - a fact that led to my bragging about being one of the first people on Earth outside of Jaguar Land Rover to drive the L405, and among the first to review it. While in Morocco, they told us even the Queen’s driver and the Top Gear team had yet to sample the vehicle, which made my chest swell even more... but I digress.

So, I had a left-hand drive pre-sale L405 in my hands, putting it through its paces on the western fringes of the expansive Sahara desert, across the desolate country of Morocco, partly submerged upstream of a shoulder-deep river where the exceptional Queen Mary vents — that’s what they’re actually called — proved their worth (the water was so deep, some of it came up the bonnet and sloshed about at the bottom of the windscreen, making us feel like we were in a shallow inverse aquarium); and eventually up the Atlas Mountains where the prevailing environmental conditions changed from sunny desert to light snow and ice, and that is where the chickens came home to roost.

I was only a few short clicks away from one of the many checkpoints dotting our very long route when the multimedia screen turned black and flashed a stark message at me in an angry red font: “Suspension failure!” What gives? The car was running fine, or at least it felt like it was. Also, this was a brand new vehicle; a quick glance at the odo showed it was yet to cross the mid four figures. What was this about a suspension error?

I got to the checkpoint and raised one of the engineers stationed there on the gong: “Yo, my ride is on the fritz; there is this snarky spiel on the televizzle whatchamacallit carping some twaddle about the stilts, could you take a garner at it then, guv’nor? Thanks”

“Sure we can. Just leave the car here and hitch a ride in another one”

Umm, no. I didn’t fly all the way to Europe and back down to North Africa on a bucket list journey just to come “hitch a ride” in one of the most historically and technologically important automotive products that the entire globe had been keenly waiting for with bated breath, myself included.

No, siree. I’ve got to drive, and drive I will. So when the man walked away, presumably to pen a thinly worded telegram to Solihull gingerly explaining that it was business as usual as far as the new Range Rover’s reliability was concerned, I summoned the dark powers of the IT world which I had quit only two years earlier to come to my rescue - after all, the L405 packed more computing power in its various processors than was required to send man to the moon the first time.

Think of it as a high-end quad-core laptop with leather seats that can go off-road and costs Sh30 million. I applied the tech industry standard procedure: if it fails, restart it.

And voilà! The message was gone after the restart. Nothing black, nothing red; all smiles, full speed ahead. It’s like it never happened.

I gleefully threw the transmission into gear and pointed the car’s grille further up the mountain then gave the Rangie the beans, hightailing it out of the checkpoint in a spray of icy moss and thus  foregoing my tea and snacks lest that engineer came back to say Solihull was disappointed with my observation and would like to have a word with me about what exactly I was doing to their car. The rest of the trip went faultlessly, except for me missing out on the tea. I like my tea.

That is just it. The L405 does not seem immune to the curse that plagued its predecessors, but the reason we don’t hear much about it is because of its buyer base. People who buy L405s cannot be found on Internet forums bitching about their cars because they probably know precious little about them, besides the fact that they are extremely powerful and extremely comfortable, the two things that matter most to them.

They are too busy being captains of industry to tool around their cars that much and probably have fleet managers who clean and maintain their vehicles for them, so they will never lay eyes on a single warning light in their entire lives.

It is second and third owners like you or me who bring to the fore such complications should they arise, and they will arise eventually. These complications can be properly unsettling, such as when your vehicle decides to sit on its haunches overnight and never get up. Even flat-bedding it becomes a problem.

Remember the UN employee from last year who was not backward about coming forward with his exact monthly income to the nearest 10 dollars? Take the advice I gave him to heart:

Range Rovers are nice cars but to own one painlessly you might need to come from a trust fund kind of family, or create an app that Zuckerberg will buy from you... probably an app that predicts exactly when the air suspension on an L405 will pack up, grounding your car; only this time there will be no engineer from the Atlas mountains to contact Solihull for you... only the local dealer who will want to know where you got the car from before they even touch it.

Enjoy your year – and the car, if you get round to buying it.

Get the GT at once; forget about the regular Impreza

I’m a Subaru lover and thinking of getting a Subaru Impreza GT as my first car.

Is it a good move or should I get used to the ordinary Impreza first, and what is the fuel consumption of the Impreza GT like?

Tony

Tony,

Cut to the chase and just get the GT at once, then slowly ease yourself into it. Don’t go all out on day one, you might not live to repeat the experiment.

There is a certain satisfaction to be experienced from delayed gratification, but I’m not sure automotive ownership falls under that chapter of anthropology. The GT is quicker and more engaging than the boggo Impy, but it is a lot more tractable than the unhinged STi, which means it is more user-friendly to greenhorns who want to venture into the pseudo-narcotic world of turbo boost addiction. An added advantage is a steeper but somehow gentler learning curve: you won’t waste time trundling about in a limp-wristed NA car, an experience you can get with a Peugeot 206 (hahaha!) or a Toyota Premio and thus negate the pertinence of the Subaru logo on your grille; you want something that will make you learn faster without potentially ending your life. Getting into a GT outright is that something. Think of it this way: how does one learn to swim? Do you read about it on the Internet then sit in a bathtub for a week, or do you find the nearest large water body and plunge into the shallows first, wallowing about like a stricken duck until you eventually develop the skill and courage to venture further out deeper into that same lake? The regular Impreza is a large basin; the Impreza GT is a small lake. The STi is more like the Niagara Falls, it can be overwhelming.

The fuel consumption is what you  make it. It can be very good, as good as 13km/l if you avoid traffic jams and drive like the NTSA dreams we should; or you can do as little as 5km/l if every single drive you take either resembles the parking lot of a car factory or is a blat to the world at large at how you can easily clinch a driver’s championship in any challenge they throw at you.

Enjoy your GT!

I love the Teana but the X-Trail seems more practical

Hi Baraza,

Thank you for the good work you’re doing. I’ve learnt a number of things from your column but at this point I need some professional advice. 

I’m thinking of buying my first car and I’m torn between a Nissan Teana, which I’m comparing to a Toyota Premio; or should I just buy a Nissan X-Trail. 

I am a graphic designer and photographer based in Nairobi, which means space is a major a consideration because  I have to carry  equipment for outdoor assignments.  I’m also a farmer - I’m into fishing and beekeeping which I practise is in Western Kenya. That means I will be travelling there almost every weekend. 

What’s your view of the Premio vs Teana or  just buying an X-Trail? I’m thinking of the X-Trail only because of size... but my heart is really set on a Teana. The dealer told me to forget about the Teana and get a Premio, but when  I thought of the long distances I’ll be covering I was hesitant. I’m also a big fan of speed.

Ken

Listen here Ken,

Ample ambience, assignments, agriculture, angling, apiaries... all your demands make for good alliteration, but they also all point towards the X-Trail. Girlfriends are chosen from the heart. Cars are chosen from the mind, given that you are not a billionaire about to throw his car into space (what’s up with that?) – the only people who can guiltlessly and painlessly attach emotion to automotive purchases, given the sums they’ll be spending on patently useless items like an Aston Martin Vulcan. So, forget the Teana, no matter how hard it tugs at your heart strings because it, too, is patently useless to your professional and personal existence besides tickling your fancy.

So that is solved, X-Trail it is. But just to satisfy your curiosity, between the Teana and the Premio, it again goes back to the hearts vs minds disquisition: the Teana is an emotional purchase, bought by people who are not billionaires and love Nissans for some reason, or because there is a certain unusual beauty about its silhouette and you just want it so bad; but cold logic will tell you that it is just a little bit more flimsy, a little bit more unreliable and when optioned with a beige interior, collects stains faster than a sugar-rushed outdoorsy preteen in a detergent ad campaign. That makes the Premio the thinking man’s decision, clichés be damned.

Speed? There is no hot Premio that I know of, nor is there a hot Teana... or is there? See, Nissan likes its VQ35DE engine so much that not only did they put it into the not-quite-tasteful mall-crawling, suburban-housewife, X5-wannabe chrome-toothed Murano, it actually first saw duty in the iconic 350Z sports car. That same engine, subtly subdued for more social soundness and acceptability, also found its way into the Teana. It doesn’t take an engineer in the Atlas Mountains to tell you this is no wet tissue FWD saloon; it just might be a properly fast car.

That engine somehow didn’t make its way into the X-Trail, but all the same, enjoy your X-Trail.

This is a tired question, wait for the annual automotive almanac

Baraza,

 A friend of mine is torn between getting a used (never been driven in Kenya) Land Cruiser Prado TX and Land Rover Discovery 4, probably YOM 2011/2012, to use for local runs  and occasional trips to Nyanza/Western, Rift valley and Central. I’m not so sure about the specs but I think 2700cc — or is it 4000cc? — will do.

Which would you recommend?

Martin

I think I have answered this question before... more than once. You are the people I am targeting with my overpriced, still-in-the-oven annual automotive almanac.

Enjoy the purchase (once it’s ready)!