Thread: Land Rover

Totoya and Nissan have a great advantage over Land Rover.

It doesn't matter which town you have broken down in in this country, you will always find a Jap Crap wrecking yard.

How many British wreckers are out there?

The principal reason Land Rover lost market share, in Qld. anyway, was Rovers refusal to produce a vehicle with decent highway performance. I was at Leyland Truck and Bus at the start of LR/RR distribution by this part of the BLMC conglomerate. We were flogged in the bush by this factor. Rovers attitude ( pommy paternalistic, "colonials" don't know anything) was that the LR was a bush vehicle and they made a perfectly acceptable highway 4WD, the Range Rover, which should be sold to those who wanted high speed cruising capability. Remember then the only vehicle with full time 4wd was the RR. Most 4wd's spent probably no more than 5% of their use in 4wd, this being engaged only when needed. The recreational market then was negligible. The bulk of sales were cab/chassis with drop side bodies to primary producers, miners, & the various levels of government, and lesser numbers of hardtops, truck cabs, and soft-tops in that order. Station Wagons from 73-75 were almost impossible to obtain as almost the entire production was sold to the UN by Rover direct. The country people of Qld. wanted to cruise at 60-70mph. THe LR could not and the Japs could. The second nail in the coffin was the failure of the car division in Australia to achieve a volume selling car after the mini and 1800. Dealers without a volume car to sell looked for and obtained other franchises, thus limiting our ability to appoint a sartisfactory LR/RR dealer in many towns. Ford and Holden at that time forbade their dealers to have another franchise on pain of dismissal, and a Toyota/ Nissan dealer could hardly be appointed an LR/RR dealer. They simply would not have sold them in competition with their principal franchise, just profited from parts sales. Most country towns do not give a Zone Manager a good choice of potential dealerships resulting in such unlikely appointments as a panel beater and wrecking yard; a rural supplies store selling implements, chemicals, ammunition, barbed wire etc; a corrugated iron shed with an oiled dirt floor and two manually operated pumps in the open outside whose principal business was repair of the Shire Council fleet; & a fuel depot. Some towns which should have had, and needed a dealership, did not. There was simply no one anything like suitable to appoint. Dealer availability and quality is still a problem today for low volume products.

I never broken down in a remote area to find out how hard it is to get parts for my Landrovers, might be because they have a tendency to be tempremental, we are a bit more forward in doing maintenance and as a mechanic, I would prefer everyone check their oil and coolant and have a look around once a week.

When was the last time a nissota driver lifted their bonnet to check the oil, most of them take great pride in also saying that they bought it new in 2003 and it is still going and has never been serviced.

Had a bloke last night at the pub, point at sschmezs Disco and say "oh that wouldnt make it up there" about some particular hill that probably shouldnt be driven anyway, he didnt know anything about the vehical, and didnt know it was steve's but it gave us a good laugh when he came out and said he runs cooper st's on his pootruck.

My reaction to him was that the score on my winch was 1 Landrover, 4 pootrols, 1 jeep and 1 tojo and recovered my self once and ive had the winch for 4 years.

Over the years Landrover hasnt done them selves any favours in the fight against idiots but then again how many idiots do we want driving Landrovers, we all know the truth and intellegent people will research and ask the questions to make their desision on what to drive and buy what suits them, if you base your decision on advertising then your short changing your self, I say to them.

You can argue the point for hours but it is rarely accepted that LR's are as good or better in most cases as their Jap crap but thats ok as im happy with my LR, so are my wife and kids so I dont really care anymore.

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!!!!

I feel your pain mate and comments like this really get under my skin (especially when some bloke is sitting in his 2006/7 cruiser and following me in my 1966 2A). There are a few old cruisers getting about - but thats only a few ! My olmate may be slow, noisy and use a heap of fuel these days but, when you look at its age and the fact that everyone else seemed to copy them - I reckon she's OK. I try my hardest to cool down and then say "I'm prepared to talk further about it when your car is 40+"

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

The principal reason Land Rover lost market share, in Qld. anyway, was Rovers refusal to produce a vehicle with decent highway performance. I was at Leyland Truck and Bus at the start of LR/RR distribution by this part of the BLMC conglomerate. We were flogged in the bush by this factor. Rovers attitude ( pommy paternalistic, "colonials" don't know anything) was that the LR was a bush vehicle and they made a perfectly acceptable highway 4WD, the Range Rover, which should be sold to those who wanted high speed cruising capability. Remember then the only vehicle with full time 4wd was the RR. Most 4wd's spent probably no more than 5% of their use in 4wd, this being engaged only when needed. The recreational market then was negligible. The bulk of sales were cab/chassis with drop side bodies to primary producers, miners, & the various levels of government, and lesser numbers of hardtops, truck cabs, and soft-tops in that order. Station Wagons from 73-75 were almost impossible to obtain as almost the entire production was sold to the UN by Rover direct. The country people of Qld. wanted to cruise at 60-70mph. THe LR could not and the Japs could. The second nail in the coffin was the failure of the car division in Australia to achieve a volume selling car after the mini and 1800. Dealers without a volume car to sell looked for and obtained other franchises, thus limiting our ability to appoint a sartisfactory LR/RR dealer in many towns. Ford and Holden at that time forbade their dealers to have another franchise on pain of dismissal, and a Toyota/ Nissan dealer could hardly be appointed an LR/RR dealer. They simply would not have sold them in competition with their principal franchise, just profited from parts sales. Most country towns do not give a Zone Manager a good choice of potential dealerships resulting in such unlikely appointments as a panel beater and wrecking yard; a rural supplies store selling implements, chemicals, ammunition, barbed wire etc; a corrugated iron shed with an oiled dirt floor and two manually operated pumps in the open outside whose principal business was repair of the Shire Council fleet; & a fuel depot. Some towns which should have had, and needed a dealership, did not. There was simply no one anything like suitable to appoint. Dealer availability and quality is still a problem today for low volume products.

Brian, basically you are saying the same as I did - the road performance and the dealers were the problem - by the time the road performance became available, as you say, lack of a volume car meant no dealer.

Mind you, go back to the sixties - most cars had no dealers most places (except possibly Holden) and communications were a lot worse. I remember in 1964 the ONLY car parts in stock in Normanton were spark plugs and fan belts for Holdens and Landrovers! On our field crews, generally we did not rely at all on local dealers as there usually was not one and even if there was they stocked virtually nothing - regardless of the vehicle type.

John

err ..... just tell 'em, what you don't know will hurt you.

Check out the reaction for a giggle.

ha ha, I have started a monster

Keep up the good info!

Another issue was pricing. When the 110 Countys became available they were mid-$20ks, which was serious money in 1983 and at the time you could buy a Landcruiser for around $15k.