Cheap off road 4x4 fun

[200Plus Club]

£2.5k budget. Lots and lots of options around on FB marketplace, AT etc, in fact prob too much choice!
Will be used on some easy fields and lanes for shooting from on farm land and some minor daily driving no more than 100m per week so mpg isn't major concern. I'll use AT Grabber or similar tyres.
It's gonna get scratched and used, needs to be reliable and fairly solid.
Seen some horror stories going by mot history of heavily corroded mot failures that have obviously been welded up/ bodged to sell etc.

From memory in this price bracket there are loads of:
Suzuki grand vitara petrol and diesel
Nissan X trail
Honda CRV
Toyota Rav4
Odd Nissan Terrano
A Volvo XC90 2.4d
Kia sportage diesel
Hyundai Santa fe

And a few big mileage Mitsubishi shogun or L200 etc

Have previously had 2 x Santa fe, both were ok but suffered electrical issues and injector fails but otherwise ok.
Any experience of the above /guidance appreciated as ever ta

[blue_haddock]

All of the cars on the main list are crap at off road, for proper off road ability look for a Jimny.

[200Plus Club]

blue_haddock said:

All of the cars on the main list are crap at off road, for proper off road ability look for a Jimny.

I'm not looking for true offroading it will be fields mainly that were grassed and are now cut for sileage. Would none of the above fit that bill?

[wiliferus]

Hi again!

Missing off your list is the Subaru Forester. Decent ground clearance, rugged plastic interior, proper 4x4, makes a nice noise (subjective) and also woeful mpg which makes them a bit less desirable and thus cheaper...
Slightly smaller than your other choices though.

[200Plus Club]

wiliferus said:

Hi again!

Missing off your list is the Subaru Forester. Decent ground clearance, rugged plastic interior, proper 4x4, makes a nice noise (subjective) and also woeful mpg which makes them a bit less desirable and thus cheaper...
Slightly smaller than your other choices though.

Hi! :-)
Not a bad shout I suppose. Main consideration other than buying someone else's problems is ground clearance to get from a rutted lane onto the fields we shoot from.

It's funny browsing FB marketplace how many people are just selling "for a friend" or "logbook will need applying for" :-)

[wiliferus]

200Plus Club said:

Hi! :-)
Not a bad shout I suppose. Main consideration other than buying someone else's problems is ground clearance to get from a rutted lane onto the fields we shoot from.

It's funny browsing FB marketplace how many people are just selling "for a friend" or "logbook will need applying for" :-)

IMHO opinion FB market place is best avoided.

You can very occasionally find a peach, but you’ve got to wade through a lot of slurry to find it. Far too many “U wot m8” types on there.

[200Plus Club]

Yea joined a few 4x4 off road groups and looking around. As it happens there is a Forrester popped up today by look of it that looks tidy.

[drgoatboy]

Any of those would be fine. Hell I used to drive round fields and rutted tracks in a Renault 18 and never got stuck.

I am no expert on any of the cars but from a keyboard warrior point of view...

CRV have a good reputation for reliability. Xtrail a good reputation for being halfway between an off roader and an SUV. XC90 have a good reputation of being expensive to fix!

Personally I think I would be looking at a petrol CRV. Forester would be a good shout but I would be concerned about 2nd hand parts availability. They are not exactly common.

[ZX10R NIN]

Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited this would be my pick

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/202...

Lexus RX300

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/202...

ML350

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/202...

Murano

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/202...

[Terzo123]

That jeep looks decent value.

I loved mine, would happily have another.

[200Plus Club]

Jeep does look tidy will have a look at mot history later

[wiliferus]

Jeep is a good shout, but with your limited mileage, surely you’d be better off going for the petrol V8..... this is PistonHeads after all?

[ZX10R NIN]

try finding one.

[gman88667733]

I have had a 2.0 petrol MK2 Honda CRV Auto for about a year now. Lovely car to drive, I really like it a lot. Has been fine for the 'off the track' driving I do, with good tyres they can do an awful lot it seems.

Common faults... Brake calipers! I've had 3 of mine go this year. The originals for some reason seemed to seize up like it was nobody's business. Obviously i've been unlucky given it didn't have new calipers in the 17 years before I had it, but still.

A few other bits have gone wrong too, but nothing major. Had I not had to sort every single brake component almost, it would've been a cheap first year. So hopefully nice and cheap from now.

Would still recommend though, even at 18 years old, mine feels so well screwed together, everything works, it is comfy and is really large inside. Manual tends to get 4-5mpg better than the auto.

(Some say that they have rust issues - more so in the States, but mine hasn't got a single speck of rust on it and it rarely gets washed.)

Edited by gman88667733 on Monday 10th August 11:23

Edited by gman88667733 on Monday 10th August 11:24

[Salmonofdoubt]

What about a Frontera? They're surprisingly good off road.

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/2020...

You'd also find an Isuzu trooper in budget

[200Plus Club]

Salmonofdoubt said:

What about a Frontera? They're surprisingly good off road.

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/2020...

You'd also find an Isuzu trooper in budget

Seen one trooper that looked tired a nd the mot history was a horror show of never addressing minor faults etc.

Not considered /Seen a frontera tbh!

[200Plus Club]

Salmonofdoubt said:

What about a Frontera? They're surprisingly good off road.

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/2020...

You'd also find an Isuzu trooper in budget

The beauty of the mot history being available online! The frontera was parked up and left somewhere damp in 2015 looking at the mot history as it reappeared in 2020 with chassis rust, corroded springs, and other issues.
We used to shoot from a frontera that was pretty good to be fair off road but I'll pass on that one despite it being very low mileage.

[Walter Sobchak]

Landcruiser Colarado, should be able to get an ok one for £2.5k, don’t worry about high mileage they go on forever, just make sure it has been serviced-regular oil changes etc, recent cam belt is a plus but it’s not a big job on them at all.
I’d personally not worry about buying one with 200k+ on the clock.