The status, why do rich wankers buy Lambos and Ferraris when they dont have the balls or skills to actually use them.
If they were into the looking rich sort of thing they would have bought a Range Rover, not a Land Rover. At least from a UK perspective where Land Rovers are everywhere you look in the countryside (although range rovers are universally everywhere regardless). I would say that there are people who buy them purely from the wanting to own a rugged military style vehicle with no intentions of using it as such. Similar to people who buy Jeeps just for that specific image. In which case I would agree 100% that some people do that. But I would suggest that is not a large amount of the audience because they are so raw to travel in, most people wouldn't be willing to sacrifice all forms of comfort to attain that. From doing a quick search on auto trader you can get a functioning Land Rover Defender 90 for less than £4k ($5200).
Yes, in the American market. I don't care how much they are for you, I don't live in Europe, they're $90,000 for me. I don't care if it's rare, a Cosworth Vega is rare and they aren't $90,000. The USDM V8 models are notoriously unreliable. The USDM Defender made a whopping 188HP (possibly less, I can't be bothered to dig further) from it's 3.9L V8, where as a Jeep TJ of a similar vintage made 190HP from a similar sized engine, with two less cylinders. For comparison, the 4 liter V6 in my car (again, a similar size and two less cylinders) makes 210HP, and only 7 lb-ft less torque. In a similar vintage Explorer (another off-roader) it made 210HP and 4 more lb-ft torque (254lb-ft). That was the Explorer's smallest engine versus the Defender's biggest. You could get a 5L V8 in the Explorer. Thus, the Defender is underpowered. The Defender is overweight. This one's easy: 3,913 pounds versus the Jeep TJ at 3,073 pounds. It weighs more than the friendly neighborhood Explorer (3,707 pounds), has less doors, is smaller, and can seat 4 (barely), not 5. BOAT. ANCHOR.
To be pedantic you did say Which doesn't exclude the vehicles domestic market or other markets outside of the US.
I honestly don't see the issue in why someone would buy or own one, it's their choice right? Of course there's much better choices out there, but that's really up to their decision and what they're willing to do with their money. I wouldn't go to a Hyundai dealership and ask people "why would you buy this car, when you could just buy a Civic or a Corolla?" Not everyone thinks the same way. I will point this out, you said that you didn't care about it, then why even bother complaining about it, it's not going to do much justice, and it isn't something that you have to be worried about. I see a friend, or someone I know drive a car that I'm not particularly fond of? I'm not that asshole that goes up to them and go "Hey, I don't like your car, and it's useless, go buy another one". It's what they chose to drive, and I respect them for that.
You said in general. Yes that particular engine for those years is a bit under powered, thats why they changed it. Again you never made that clear in your last post. The cars didn't cost anything like that new. You would be mad to pay that for one. As for reliability thats just an opinion as fact. They really aren't all that bad. Quite number of the armoured police land rovers here date back to the early 90s and are still running on those V8s today. In general the Rover V8 is a pretty well received engine. Not sure where you got the weight spec on the Explorer, the model I found, a 1993 4WD V6 comes out to 1840 kg / 4060 lbs. Either way, the reason for the big weight is because of the frame, its a lot more substantial than something you would find in an Explorer or Wrangler, obviously so because its designed to do alot more than carry people, its designed as a fullsize pickup, crewcab and 4 door so has a GVWR of 6724lbs or just over 3000KG.
I agree that Defenders are way too pricey in the US, but they are still a neat vehicle and if someone has the money let them do what they want. Also, it really isn't that under powered. An FJ80 had only 155 horsepower and weighed nearly 800 lbs more. Our FZJ80 had 212 horses (from the factory, I doubt it has that much now) and probably weighs upwards of 5000 lbs with all of the off road armor. Solid axle off road vehicles usually aren't designed to go fast.
It's a rover V8, itself a Buick v8 with some modifications, and it's not really highly tuned. Though I'm not seeing the argument for it being underpowered. The numbers provided reinforce that it isn't underpowered. The Jeep makes 2 more horsepower from the same displacement but 2 less cylinders, great, number of cylinders doesn't make any difference except parasitic loss really (and some combustion chamber design considerations that only really effect the extremes in size). You should only ever be comparing displacement for displacement rather than combining the cylinder count. Your Mustang is making more? Ok, that's fair but we've also established my car makes a tiny insignificant quantity more than the Mustang, and wide open throttle full boost what does mine flow? About 4 litres of air. Fuel makes power, fuel cares about how much of it there is, not whether it's split into 4 pots or 6 or 8 --- Post updated --- And yeah everything I have lists the defender as lighter than an explorer. Therefore the explorer is underpowered versus the defender. Also got proper high low gearing in the defender to make best use of what it has off road and then on road it's not meant to be quick.
That's just serendipity. In a country where private ownership of handguns is legal, someone will eventually find out that the space between seat and console in a certain car is just the right size to hold some types of handgun in place. Not really the most secure solution (if that's your concern, someone makes a gun lock that bolts to your floorboard, requiring potential thieves to steal the entire car and then enlist the services of a safecracker both skilled and delicate), but if you're not headed for any of those wonderful gun free zones, it's not too much of a problem.
I need validation over a petty YouTube argument (which I probably shouldn't shouldn't have let myself get involved in in the first place, but whatever). The ambulance is totally at fault in this video right? (50 seconds in) It's in the fast lane, cuts in front of the truck, and comes to a complete stop still half in the slow lane, but a couple of people are blaming the truck for not leaving safe following distance. How anyone can be expected to leave a safe gap behind a vehicle that is overtaking you in a different lane entirely is anyone's guess. Doesn't help that the show's scriptwriters blamed the truck as well. I can only assume people are misunderstanding exactly what happened and think the ambulance was already in the slow lane and the truck was simply following too close. Of course that's impossible when you think about it. The ambulance was clearly moving faster than the truck when they entered the frame, so how could the truck have been following directly behind it? It wouldn't have even been able to keep up with it, let alone tailgate it. The only explanation is that the ambulance had just overtaken the truck on the right and cut across. It's even still a little over the white line as it passes. Ugh, great. This is a rant now. I'm going to bed.
Yes the ambulance is clearly at fault for that, you can see that it's moving towards the edge of the motorway (where the camera is and it still going quite fast when it's in front of the truck. Very poor driving from the ambulance driver.
Its kinda both the truck AND the ambulance. More blame on the truck though IMO. The trucker shouldve seen the police lights ahead and a ambulance behind and moved over a lane. I dont think it would have mattered AT ALL had the ambulance arrived behind the truck however. So ambulance really had no need to cut the truck off
Been having a speculative look at car insurance prices. If I wanted a 2001 1.8l 120hp Lotus Elise the insurance would be £15,700 per year. That is for a policy that covers an estimated 5k miles per year.Or £1500 per month if I wanted to pay monthly with the first payment being £2400. Strangely no one is offering black box insurance for that vehicle xD Understandable, I guess. Thankfully* stuff like a 1.6l kia Ceed would be around £1400 a year with a black box and dash camera on the same policy as above. Having said that, a Volvo C30 Sport R design would be cheaper at £1100 (with blackbox + DashCam). If I were to wait 3 months the price would go down to £844.28 as well which is pretty neat, since I am about a year out from any potential purchase. *Not that I am particularly stoked about it
$15 grand a year just in insurance?! I'm only paying about $900 a year, between two separate vehicles.
Yeah, the car itself was worth £13k I guess the stats don't look good if they are charging that much. That sort of pricing would lead me to think that about 30% of people my age must crash them. Or presumably similar cars since they likely don't have a whole lot of data to work on.
It sounds more like the insurance company just doesn't want the business. If paying for the insurance requires writing the car off completely every year, It's just not worth it.
