Back in the summer, I bought a cheap 2008 Land Rover Range Rover with over 200,000 miles on the clock to use as a beater in New York City. I went into it thinking I’d be dealing with problem after problem, seeing as how the internet loves to hate on these cars when it comes to reliability. But my reality has been far different.
Aside from an oil change, I haven’t done any maintenance on this Range Rover at all. In addition to sitting for long periods of time at my parents’ house and existing on the streets of New York City, I also drove it to Chicago and back, where it performed flawlessly (for the most part).
In yet another test of durability, I tasked my Range Rover with being a support vehicle for my recent ice racing adventure that I wrote about yesterday, a job that required starting in hellishly cold temperatures, lots of idling time, and hundreds of miles of travel. And yet again, it didn’t let me down. But it wasn’t faultless, either.
Let Me Catch You Up
I’d like to make it clear this Range Rover isn’t perfect. Far from it, actually. Most of the truck works well, but there are enough dents, dings, and rust spots to total it out if I were to bring it to a proper body repair shop. The passenger-side front window has a huge crack running through it, and the driver’s seat heater doesn’t work.
There are also two lights illuminated on the dashboard. The first issue is a tire pressure monitoring system light that hasn’t worked since I bought the truck, and I don’t want to waste time or money fixing it. I’m pretty good at sensing whether my tires are going flat, so that light will likely stay on until I sell the thing.
The second light is a check engine light for the emissions system. I haven’t looked into this issue much, though I suspect at least one of the catalytic converters has gone bad, seeing as how the exhaust smells pretty gross. This is something I’ll have to address within the next month if I want to pass New York’s state inspection.
Other than those things, though, the truck is pretty solid. The engine barely burns or leaks any oil, and it still pulls strongly, while the transmission shifts as it should. The widely criticized air suspension system works well, as does the two-speed transfer case. For the price I paid, it’s a lot of truck!
The Range Rover’s Toughest Challenge Yet
In case you haven’t read my Audi ice racing piece, here’s the short version: This past weekend, I went and bought a 2014 Audi A8 L to go ice racing in upstate New York, which turned out to be a great success and a lot of fun. But none of it would’ve been possible without the Range Rover working tirelessly in the background to act as a support truck.
It was the Range Rover that got me 200 miles from New York City to the Audi in Vermont, and the Range Rover that carried all of my tools, racing gear, unhealthy snacks, and other supplies to the event in upstate New York. The Rover acted as a mobile living room for my friends and me throughout the day, and served as our “errand runner” car for when we needed lunch or tools that we didn’t have. And it did all of this in -12 degree Fahrenheit weather.
In all, the truck was driven about 550 miles over the weekend. It never stuttered or hesitated to go wherever I needed it to go, and it didn’t even burn any oil. Sure, fuel economy was pretty terrible, but that’s to be expected for something that is legitimately shaped like a brick on wheels.
Of course, a project car road trip wouldn’t be a project car road trip if even something small didn’t go wrong.
If It Has To Break, I Prefer It To Break Like This
The sub-zero temperatures lingered throughout the day on Sunday, meaning the Range Rover was idling for hours at a time on the ice. I had the climate control set to full blast to keep my friends and me warm, making the cabin a nice, cozy place to spend time while watching the other race heats. As it turns out, all of that hot air traveling through the dashboard was harming the infotainment system.
Halfway through the day, we began to realize the infotainment screen was going black and refusing to turn on when the power button was pressed. Thinking it was just a minor electrical gremlin, I turned the Range Rover off and then on again. This fixed the problem, but only temporarily. Before the screen went black a second time, it showed a message on the screen:
Temperature Error
Shutting Down …
After that, the screen went black again and wouldn’t turn back on. Upon closer inspection, the screen was, in fact, pretty hot to the touch. I determined that the HVAC system, which had been pumping full-blast heat for hours, probably just overheated the infotainment system, since they’re located so closely within the dashboard together. The solution was simply turning off the truck and giving it an hour to cool down, then running the heat at a lower temperature and fan speed for the rest of the day. The problem has yet to return, so I’d consider that fixed.
The silver lining is that at least the infotainment system was smart enough to realize that it was overheating and shut off. I’d rather it take a little break than fry itself forever. That would’ve required me to replace the unit, which would’ve been costly and time-consuming.
Other than that little hiccup, the Range Rover performed flawlessly. It continues to impress me, both with its reliability and its abilities as a rugged all-rounder. As I near its next scheduled oil change, I’ll have to address that CEL sooner rather than later, though. Which means the money pit will soon open for real. Wish me luck.
Top graphic image: Brian Silvestro
Good news! A pair of catalytic converters is under a grand on Rock Auto!
That’s nice. Is it a bad time to mention that my neighbor’s LR4 with far fewer miles has been sitting immobile on the street for weeks with its front wheels tucked way up into the wheel wells from a failed front air suspension? I wouldn’t even trust a Lexus SUV with that tech.
The issue with unreliable car models is that they don’t all break. Just more of them do. One of them working well doesn’t disprove the probability differential with more reliable models. If you roll lucky, you’re happy. If you don’t, you’re not.
The converse of this is when a Toyota suffers a failure it shouldn’t, it really pisses the owner off.
My Mercedes-Benz has had the same issue for ages.
Apparently the HVAC system has ducts that run right behind the COMAND unit, so it overheats the nav DVD player – probably the in-dash CD player too, not that I’ve ever used it in 13 years.
And not that the ancient COMAND nav system is of any use anyway.
But at least I can still stream music.
We had the “smokers test” when I worked on car radios. They would have the windows open in the winter with the heat on full blast, which would cook the radios pretty good, even worse than the “desert test”. Interestingly the worst ones were the cheap radios that had the integrated amplifier which created more heat inside the infotainment, whereas the expensive trims had the external amplifier which were fine.
Loving those Windows 3.1 graphics on the infotainment screen! Please tell me it has a waving W screen saver.
I wonder if it’s a Windows CE screen. Tons of industrial HMIs used to use that platform…
Remember. If each of these car has a 99% failure rate, if you get 69 of them (nice) odds are one of them will work when you need them.
Red Pill: Entertainment
Blue Pill: Heat
Choose one.
I can always wear more layers while behind the wheel…