A long, slow, painful goodbye...

Merry Christmas and all that.

Finally, the time had come to return my heavily spec'ed Evoque Pure Tech (all black). I bought the car because a) we actually needed an off-road capable 4x4 whilst living in Berlin, b) the wife did not want a Defender, and c) we were impressed with the test drive of the RRE.

This only went South from here.

The car was cursed from day one. Seriously. I have owned quite a few cars in my life, and driven many, many rentals (often for extended periods of time). I have never had as many technical problems with any car as I had with the RRE. Never. The electronics used in mine (2015) should simply have been replaced - all of them. Whether it was the electronic parking brake (five days in service, because a) "sure, that's a known problem", and b) "well, but we have to import the computer from the UK"), twice the diesel catalyst probe (Ever tried driving on a German autobahn at 80km/h? Just, you know don't...), twice the touchscreen, and so on.

Speaking of touchscreens, given that the RRE is marketed as a luxury SUV, it seems fair to point out that the entire multimedia and navigation equipment is vintage junk. Yes, the new ones, too. Overpriced, abysmally slow, voice control is a nightmare, and so on.

Extra hate for whichever material the backs of the front seats are made from, but if you put anything on the back seats, make sure it is properly fastened. Otherwise you will end up with deep scratches from e.g. a laptop bag. Yes, a nylon laptop bag. Ridiculous.

And a word about a certain JLR in our new hometown in Bavaria: I hate you, and I hope you will go out of business fast. Yes, at €65k, our RRE was a cheap car compared to what else they had to offer. Still, treating one like the proverbial brown matter while sucking up (live) to buyers of real RRs was simply not a nice thing to do. And yes, our mobility warranty had expired three days before an Italian truck driver decided to perform some heavy body work customising on our car. But, well, good dealers know how to spell obligingness, and find a solution that does not require us to rent a car whilst parts are being imported from the UK (ten days all in all).

So, well, that is it. I am firmly in the Never JLR camp now. The cars are beautiful, and they perform well. But the reliability of ours was worse than the Jags my mother used to drive in the 70s, service was a nightmare, and, well, at €65k, the car is now vastly overpriced compared to its German competitors (which, admittedly, are mostly eyesores, but at least they work reliably).

Either way, thanks for running and maintaining this forum. I have benefited greatly from many tips and tricks published here.

Goodbye!

   

Sorry that your car hasn’t lived up to standards, my first RRE was brilliant but the 2nd ran beautifully for the first 9 months and then was in the dealership every 2nd week after a software “upgrade that was a downgrade” caused the DPF sensor to melt down and yes it had the same result as you had on the Autobahn - big trucks honking at you as they pile up behind your luxury SUV that cannot exceed 30mph.......... not funny and LR shrugged it off as “it must be the way you drive the car” which was enough for me to hand write a letter of complaint to the Herr Doktor in charge - the car was fixed exceptionally quickly after I also posted on here! I have been running an SDv6 RRS HSE Dynamic for 3.5 years since, one of the best, if not the best, car I have ever owned and I would still own it now if LR had not specifically excluded the design fault snapping crank from the extended warranty and wouldn’t even give me a written assurance that despite the car having full main dealer servicing with the 5 year service contract they would fix it for free because it had been maintained as required and still had two further years to run on the contract. I’ve owned LR products for nearly 30 years, a new one every 3 years, but no more as I have lost confidence in them and their sales teams. I wanted to replace the RRS with a P400E version......... £82000 in the spec I wanted. Went to a dealer and sat for an hour with the salesman who ended the conversation with “of course sir as a private buyer you are not the intended customer for the PHEV. It is a tax dodge car for the business user.” WTF do you want my business or not? It seemed not so i’m Driving another brand’s PHEV that after adding a huge number of options hasn’t cost me even 50% of the cost of the P400E and is quieter and as comfortable, the dealership were brilliant, the manufacturer was brilliant when they got things wrong updating there internal software and wiped out all the orders for every model of car they make. I said years ago I would never be seen dead in any BMW product.......... well humble pie has been well and truly eaten as i’m Now driving a faultless (apart from a software glitch in their app!) exceptionally well built by Dutchmen Mini Countryman. I still own a 1996 Defender that has been 100% reliable and it was built when nobody was buying Land Rover products because they were shoddily built and extremely unreliable! Looks like things have come full circle since the 1990’s for LR - sales falling like a lead balloon, quality and reliability falling through the floor and a sales force who don’t want to sell the customer what they want to buy.............. I don’t think it is production line staff who need a shake/ mass redundancies, it is the 100’s of middle managers who seem to do little all day long except say NO to customers who have broken cars and drive around in free cars from LR.