I'd go for a pre 2005 Td5. Much cheaper VED than the later vehicles, and the Td5 is a lovely engine: smoother, more economical & more powerful than the earlier engines, and it has the anti-stall feature which is flippin' brilliant.
Go for one with the post 2002 ECU upgrade to avoid the jerky low-speed throttle - although it's easy to drive around. We love ours, it's a 2002 model that we bought when it was about 9 months old. It's now done just over 102k miles and has been completely reliable - although it does of course suffer from some of the usual Defender 'features' that make owning them so endearing.
Last edited by Hamwich; 03/01/1612:45 PM.
Tim H. 1986 4/4 VVTi Sport, 2002 LR Defender, 2022 Mini Cooper SE
I worked at Land Rover from 1979 to 1988; sadly deciding to leave after one of the many restructures. 6 years in overseas sales (SE Asia & Pacific) and 3 years in UK fleet sales. Lots of memories and adventures. I do remember having to take one of these from Solihull to Belgravia to show to an oversees embassy. They were thinking of buying some Solihull refurbished ex British Army units.
Huge fun driving into Central London, but glad I didn't have to buy the petrol. (It had the 3.5 V8)
I knew some twins from Leeds in my MG days who were into anything like the FC Land Rover, and they had some horror stories about fuel consumption. But it's such a good looking vehicle. They also bought an ex army 4WD flatbed truck - the cost was minimal, and had a 4WD airport fast response fire tender. That was their best truck. It had a huge engine but a tiny fuel tank - so getting anywhere was tedious. I think the range was about 40 miles on a full tank at about 4 or 5 mpg. It had an XKE engine to power the water pump, and I recall in a dry year they used it to water their allotment.
DaveW '05 Red Roadster S1 '16 Yellow (Not the only) Narrow AR GDI Plus 4
Dad and I always fancied one of those Simon, but with the radio body - not many manufactured...
We'll have a Land Rover chat sometime, maybe over a sausage roll!
Indeed! At Haynes might be a good move, considering the sausage rolls
Graham, since these sausage rolls are legendary perhaps you can suggest to the Haynes Museum to set up a sausage roll mail order business for those of us at great distance away?
