Hi Meabh,
I'm not big on the development history of the Plus 8 so can only comment on mine. It's a '96 3.9 litre with EFI. I've had the car for coming up 7 years and love the torque and easy cruising, everything (apart from low speed manoeuvring) is so effortless.
I've only had two problems with it, the first was a wire had chafed and shorted causing the ECU to keep pumping fuel, this was just before the Centenary event and BHM were totally snowed under so I got a local Land Rover dealer to sort it out. I convinced them that with a Rover engine, gear box and ECU it was a Rover with a "funny" body
The second problem could have happened to a lot of models, last year immediately before MOG14 (why do these things always happen at the worst times?), we were on holiday in the Lake District and it rained really heavily for a couple of days, water got through the louvres/under the bonnet and found its way into the ECU and it wouldn't run, I was able to dry it out with a hairdryer and it's been fine since. I (hope) I've now sealed the bulkhead where the harness passes through, drilled some drainage holes in the bottom of the ECU housing, treated it with ACF-50 and bought a storm cover, so hopefully that problem won't happen again. Other than those I've never regretted going for the Plus 8.
