Discovery 5

[jonwm]

Afternoon all

I'm coming out of a transporter T6 shortly, been a great kid and bike carrier the last few years but I'm using it less and less as a family wagon and more just on my own in it.

Looking for something to replace it that will still carry 5 of us in comfort and fit the bikes in, I've had a few 5008's previously when on the car scheme with Stellantis but looking at prices I cant seem to look past the nice spec early Discovery's.

I know to avoid the 2.0, but 2017,2018 HES luxury spec in the 3.0 are £25k ish, seems a lot of car for what you get, absolutely loaded and still do 35mpg, my van does less than this.

Appreciate they can be a lottery with repairs but have seen an 80k full LR service history with cambelt done 6 months ago, probably as safe as you can buy I'd think.

Q7, X5, XC90 all seem £5k more at this type of age / spec

Not being a brand snob ... but I am as spend a lot of time in them am i missing something with residuals?

[66HFM]

My preference would be a late reg Disco 4 in either HSE, HSE Luxury or Landmark spec.
I personally think they are a more practical and useful 'do everything' car than a D5, they also look a lot nicer...

[jrinns]

I think people are concerned with reliability and running one without a warranty. I need to replace a leggy Cayenne this year and quite fancy a Range Rover of that year, its a buyer market..

[Over over under steer]

The well documented bork factor should be enough reason to look elsewhere. If they go, they go in a wallet busting fashion. It’s only a car and not worth taking that risk. Plenty of large cars that can carry five in comfort that don’t have the risk of a self-destructing engine.

If you want a big Land Rover then I’d go late disco 4. They have their own problem re oil starvation which is well documented but overall they appear to be less likely to destroy themselves.

[Edible Roadkill]

I like the look of these as well but you can’t ignore the well documented issues that occur. There’s a few local to me and they seem to disappear from time to time, for weeks not days, normally with a dealer plated evoke donning the driveway for the time it’s gone. I just think it’d be too much hassle.

[Tom4398cc]

They are fantastic, but, the 3.0 SDV6 engine is known for snapping its crankshaft (needing an engine rebuild) and the DPF filters can crack (£1,600+VAT for the part plus about £1k ish to fit, and usually requires an EGR and throttle body replacement, or forces you to do a DPF delete).

So you need to go in with your eyes open.

Admittedly not a D5, but I had a 2015 L494 Range Rover Sport bought at 97,000 miles with the best FSH of quite a number I looked at. I did a further 35,000 miles over 18 months enjoying it very much and then got out. I couldn’t take the background nagging worry of its engine letting go anymore. Every time I went on social media the garages that do engine rebuilds had loads of photos of the ones they were changing engines on. Being honest, I didn’t have the money spare for an engine rebuild, so wanted to avoid that risk.

[Crumpet]

Good cars, but not as good as the D4.

I went from fully loaded D4 HSE Lux to D5 HSE Lux with the 2.0 litre petrol engine, not because of the Ingenium diesel reliability issues but because a nasty four pot diesel doesn’t suit a ‘luxury’ SUV like a D5. The petrol wasn’t as good as the six cylinder diesel but it was fine and, I believe, is as reliable as any. Of course you’ve still got all the other stuff that goes wrong with them (my only issues were with the stty InControl entertainment system!) but at least you won’t need to worry about snapped crankshafts.

That being said, I always missed the D4. They’re awesome machines.