The reality is that in 1974 I could still buy OEM muffler for our 1950 Land Rover from Grenville Motors the Land Rover Distributor.
These days manufacturers are not required to maintain a parts supply when a model has been out of production for more than 5 years.
30 years ago there were no microprocessors in Land Rover so they can usually be repaired or even re-manufactured using normal engineering practices. All the Land Rovers produced today have multiple engine and vehicle management systems and numerous other microprocessor based fittings. These will not be produced by the manufacturer after the vehicles are more than 5 or 10 years old. How will someone be able to reproduce the "secret code" Land Rover burnt into some EPROM if you don't know the code. They will have to have aftermarket microprocessor designed to replace the function of the unobtainable OEM device. That is a very different situation to what are now 30 year old vehicles.
More important is the fact that many of the microprocessors are malfunctioning even before the vehicle runs out of warranty but the mechanics are instructed not to inform the customer, just so they can get it past the warranty period. If Land Rover can't sfford to replace microprocessors on in-warranty vehicles what will be the situation 10, 20 or 30 years down the road.
Try to find a new OEM head for a 200TDi today, almost unobtainable and that is only 10 years down the track.
And if you think that LR are not so bad look at this thread from today http://www.aulro.com/afvb/electronic...l-problem.html

