Land Rover Reliability

Land Rover Reliability

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Fittster

Original Poster:

20,120 posts

212 months

Thursday 6th September 2018
quotequote all
Another day, another survey flagging up the poor reliability of Land Rovers.

Why are Land Rover unable to address the reliability problems? It's not as if it's a new issue.

Is it down to:

1. Poor Design. Making a car that is both luxurious and able to do serious off road work must be tricky but even the evoque which doesn't have great off road credentials comes up poorly in reliability polls.

2. Poor Materials. Do the just build the cars from poor quality parts / materials to save cost.

3. Sloppy manufacturing. is the manufacturing process the problem, more investment in training and automation required. British workers seem to be able to assemble the products from other manufactures without issues (e.g. Hondas and Nissans).

4. All the above or something else.

Ultimately it must hurt the bottom line, due to loss of sales and the cost of warranty work but it doesn't seem the firm are able to get a grip on the problem

Mercury00

4,098 posts

155 months

Thursday 6th September 2018
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Why are all cars not as reliable as each other? I always wonder this. Nissan were at the bottom of the survey too, a company with heavy French input.

Cold

15,207 posts

89 months

Thursday 6th September 2018
quotequote all
Fittster said:
Another day, another survey
Another day and another survey has them ahead of some prestigious German brands.

JD Power:




Link

HTP99

22,445 posts

139 months

Thursday 6th September 2018
quotequote all
Mercury00 said:
Why are all cars not as reliable as each other? I always wonder this. Nissan were at the bottom of the survey too, a company with heavy French input.
Look at Skoda vs VW vs Audi on these type of reliability indexes; Skoda is always near the top with VW and Audi middle to bottom, they are all the same car.

I think much of it is also perception of the owner too as opposed to outright reliability.

Fittster

Original Poster:

20,120 posts

212 months

Thursday 6th September 2018
quotequote all
I was hoping to understand what is going wrong within Land Rover.

I understand that the various surveys carried all have the imperfections but when Land Rover are always languishing at the bottom something must be wrong.

If Toyota/Lexus can build reliable 4x4s (RAV4, Land Cruisers, various Lexus models) what is holding back Land Rover?

Fittster

Original Poster:

20,120 posts

212 months

Thursday 6th September 2018
quotequote all
Cold said:
Fittster said:
Another day, another survey
Another day and another survey has them ahead of some prestigious German brands.

JD Power:




Link
But even in that survey they are still near the bottom. Surely people with control at Land Rover would prefer them nearer the top.

Wooda80

1,743 posts

74 months

Thursday 6th September 2018
quotequote all
A few observations:

  • Most of the brands at the top of the list make inexpensive cars, most of the brands at the bottom of the list make more expensive cars. The more expensive the car, generally the more features there are to go wrong and the more demanding, and therefore more likely to report problems, are the owners.
  • It's hard to see why there should be anything other than statistical anomaly that makes a Land Rover any different from a Jaguar in terms of reliability, same with Peugeot compared to Citroen and, not withstanding my first point SEAT & Skoda from Audi & VW.
  • The brands at the top of the table all have approx 1 reported fault per vehicle, according to the explanation on the table itself. Even the very worst brand has less than 2 reported faults per vehicle so the difference between top and bottom could hardly be smaller. To the person who asked "Why are they not all the same?" this would show that they pretty much are.

eybic

9,212 posts

173 months

Thursday 6th September 2018
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People who purchase what are considered to be "cheaper" brands have lower expectations whereas "Premium" brand owners may expect the moon on a stick with every new car whereas the likes of Hyundai drivers are happy as long as it doesn't blow up.

Steviesam

1,242 posts

133 months

Thursday 6th September 2018
quotequote all
Fittster said:
2. Poor Materials. Do the just build the cars from poor quality parts / materials to save cost.

3. Sloppy manufacturing. is the manufacturing process the problem, more investment in training and automation required. British workers seem to be able to assemble the products from other manufactures without issues (e.g. Hondas and Nissans).
These 2 IMHO.

Really piss poor operatives at the factories who can barely be arsed to turn up to work at all.

And really cutting back on materials costs. They will spend weeks and months to save £1 off a £1000 part, and do not think the consequences through, even when clearly told what problems they will get by the manufacturer of that part.

It seems they are in deep st regarding money, to the extent they are asking suppliers for cheques for MILLIONS of pounds, just off the bat, or they will be barred from future programs. Bully boy tactics.

They are skint, and losing sales for a whole load of reasons.

So

26,271 posts

221 months

Thursday 6th September 2018
quotequote all
Wooda80 said:
A few observations:

  • Most of the brands at the top of the list make inexpensive cars, most of the brands at the bottom of the list make more expensive cars. The more expensive the car, generally the more features there are to go wrong and the more demanding, and therefore more likely to report problems, are the owners.
.
Not sure about this.

I am a Land Rover customer of many years and a lot of the faults I've reported are basic things that any manufacturer should get right. E.g. panel fit, oil-tight engine, interior trim fitting correctly, paint faults, transmission faults.

As for reporting things, when a new Range Rover has emptied its diff on your drive it's not the sort of thing where you think, "ah, it's a minor fault, I'll not bother reporting it".

No, the problem with Land Rover in my opinion is as follows:

1. They use live customers for the final stages of product testing.

2. Their production standards are sub-par.

3. The manufacturer and the dealers are lazy and complacent, knowing that they will sell product regardless of how unreliable it is.



Wooda80

1,743 posts

74 months

Thursday 6th September 2018
quotequote all
So said:
I am a Land Rover customer of many years...

The manufacturer and the dealers are lazy and complacent, knowing that they will sell I will continue to buy product regardless of how unreliable it is.
Fixed that for you smile

If it did indeed empty its diff on your drive rather than just a weep then that's certainly an issue. The other areas you bring up to do with panel fit, paint finish and interior trim are the kind of things that luxury car buyers, perhaps justifiably, will pick up on whereas budget car drivers will not. Hence the difference in reported faults.

So

26,271 posts

221 months

Thursday 6th September 2018
quotequote all
Wooda80 said:
So said:
I am a Land Rover customer of many years...

The manufacturer and the dealers are lazy and complacent, knowing that they will sell I will continue to buy product regardless of how unreliable it is.
Fixed that for you smile

If it did indeed empty its diff on your drive rather than just a weep then that's certainly an issue. The other areas you bring up to do with panel fit, paint finish and interior trim are the kind of things that luxury car buyers, perhaps justifiably, will pick up on whereas budget car drivers will not. Hence the difference in reported faults.
I must apologise about the diff emptying comment, it was actually my mother's drive.

We've stopped buying LR products for now. In point of fact, our Range Rover was due to be changed 3 years ago but we didn't buy a new one because we didn't want to go to through the hassle of the two snagging lists. In my experience of new LR products there is a snagging list of things that go wrong very quickly and a second of problems that arise over the first 6 months, Once the second list is complete, and we're talking about 12 months of ownership probably, you've got a good car.

To give you some frame of reference, the last two new cars we bought were a Mini and a Fiat. So far neither has developed a fault of any type. Fit and finish throughout are perfect.




Cold

15,207 posts

89 months

Thursday 6th September 2018
quotequote all
Fittster said:
But even in that survey they are still near the bottom. Surely people with control at Land Rover would prefer them nearer the top.
Oh there's definitely work to be done. But why not start a thread about how unreliable BMWs are and how to fix the problem?


adamcot

90 posts

157 months

Thursday 6th September 2018
quotequote all
Steviesam said:
These 2 IMHO.

Really piss poor operatives at the factories who can barely be arsed to turn up to work at all.

And really cutting back on materials costs. They will spend weeks and months to save £1 off a £1000 part, and do not think the consequences through, even when clearly told what problems they will get by the manufacturer of that part.

It seems they are in deep st regarding money, to the extent they are asking suppliers for cheques for MILLIONS of pounds, just off the bat, or they will be barred from future programs. Bully boy tactics.

They are skint, and losing sales for a whole load of reasons.
This.

I used to work for one of their biggest trim supplier. Poor up-front engineering and late vehicle timing puts pressure on suppliers to achieve the impossible for no money. Their warranty bill is massive and sales are crashing.

I can also back up the comment re. requesting money from the supply base to quote on new projects. Although, they aren't the only OEM to do this....

CSLM3CSL

320 posts

142 months

Thursday 6th September 2018
quotequote all
I used to regularly look into reports on reliability for second hand vehicles in a previous job role. Skodas were significantly more reliable than Audis and it's certainly nothing to do with the reporting of faults as major issues regularly occurred on the Audis but not the Skodas. It could be that Skoda owners treat the cars better. Also the Q cars were very unreliable and Skoda doesn't have an equivalent. As for Land Rivers they were by far the least reliable.