Thread: Land Rover

Just spent the last hour arguing with a mate about Landys, of course he is a toyota driver! It started off with me commenting about the fact that the roof and sides of a Landy can be taken off in about 30mins, only having to remove aproximatly 15-20 bolts. Now this is apparently a sign of poor quality and cheap construction compaired to other vehicles!!!!

Is everyone and anyone that dose not own a Landy an expert on their level of reliability quality and performance?. Aparently my Landy is an unreliable piece of Cr@p compaired to most other cars, and the fact that it may be three times as old as their car seems to have no effect on any argument i get into.

Non Landy drivers also don't seem to pay out each others make of car as much as they do ours! So what is the reason for Land Rover to cop so much flak from other drivers?

Gees, someone knows how to get me all fired up

Originally Posted by paulthepilot_5

Just spent the last hour arguing with a mate about Landys, of course he is a toyota driver! It started off with me commenting about the fact that the roof and sides of a Landy can be taken off in about 30mins, only having to remove aproximatly 15-20 bolts. Now this is apparently a sign of poor quality and cheap construction compaired to other vehicles!!!!

Is everyone and anyone that dose not own a Landy an expert on their level of reliability quality and performance?. Aparently my Landy is an unreliable piece of Cr@p compaired to most other cars, and the fact that it may be three times as old as their car seems to have no effect on any argument i get into.

Non Landy drivers also don't seem to pay out each others make of car as much as they do ours! So what is the reason for Land Rover to cop so much flak from other drivers?

Gees, someone knows how to get me all fired up

It doesn't matter what the topic is - "if they don't know you can't tell them" .

Most people are conformists and will buy the most popular car - and regardless of what car they have bought they will rarely admit making a mistake. (The only question is whether you buy a Toyota or Nissan). And as for them not paying out other makes of car - have a look for example at the usenet group aus.cars - not four wheel drives, but regardless of whether you look at Toyota, Ford, Holden, Mitsubishi there will be someone slagging it!

Pointing out that Landrovers are used by royalty is rarely useful - over 50% of Australians are anti-royalists anyway, and many of those that aren't are actively anti-British as a result of past history from Gallipoli to Singapore to the Irish Question. Similar is the fact that since about 1990 Landrover has advertised its products as being squarely marketed for the upper middle class (Discovery) or upper class (Rangerover) city dweller, whereas while going after the same markets, the Japanese have marketed as well to rural utility users and to the lower middle class adventure market. The fact that classes hardly exist in Australia is no more relevant than the capability of the vehicles in question! Since moving to the country thirteen years ago my County has been referred to by my neighbours as "the yuppiemobile", which gives a good picture of the results of Landrovers advertising to those who look down on the people Landrover are trying to sell cars to!

While largely the result of poor market penetration, Landrover's appalling dealer network has done little to retrieve the situation set up by Landrover in the late sixties and seventies. By 1960 Landrover had probably 95% of the Australian four wheel drive market (much smaller than the present market and almost entirely utility, mainly farming, mining and construction). The Japs got a look in when Landrovers became almost unavailable in the sixties when the Army took almost all of Australia's ration (Rover was a small company and unable to meet demand - this led to the disaster of merger with Leyland in 1967). The Landcruiser and Patrol sold in the sixties mainly on the fact that you could get them, and the fact that their higher power weight ratio gave better highway performance. Another major advantage was that the FJ45 had a longer wheelbase and higher payload than Landrover. Landrover was unable to make changes to their product to meet these challenges until years later (the 120 for example of the eighties was needed twenty years earlier, and the Stage 1 was needed ten years earlier!), mainly because Leyland regarded Landrover as a cash cow since it was the only part of the business in the black. At the same time the introduction of the Leyland work culture to rover resulted in severe quality problems just at the time other competitors were improving rapidly in response to complaints. The company I worked for was an early Landcruiser adopter, and as one of our blokes commented "They said 'War last 100 years' - and they meant it"! This was in response to problems like frequent broken wheel studs, alternators failing to regulate voltage and boiling batteries (although Landrover did not introduce alternators for another six years), and one of the doozies - a spigot bearing seizing, making it almost impossible to split the gearbox from the engine to get at it. But unlike Landrover, they listened to their customers.
In the seventies, as Landrover manufacturing quality deteriorated as their competitors' quality improved, Landrover essentially threw away the Australian market.
By the time the improved product appeared in the eighties, few buyers were even looking at Landrovers - as the ads say, "Are you a Cruiser or a Patrol man?"

Another factor is the preference among many Australians for big, understressed six or eight cylinder engines - and Landrover have never had these.

Note that none of these factors have anything to do with vehicle performance, quality or reliability, but are all to do with perception!

John