I currently drive a 2000 Volvo S40 with 125K miles. It is paid off and probably worth $2500 to $3000 based on wear and tear. My brother is offering to sell me his 2001 Land Rover Discovery Series II SE with 79K miles for $5000 (pay as I can). The Land Rover is in good to excellent condition. I live in upstae New York and don’t drive far to work every day. What is the right choice, go for the Land Rover or stick with the Volvo?
Volvo all the way. I am not sure why your brother is selling but google land rovers. The 2 most constant things about them are frequent break downs and expensive repairs. Even if he did not mean to try and sell a poor vehicle buying a car from family is a bad decision. I have given cars to family members but have never sold them.
If for no other reason than maintaining your relationship with your brother, keep the Volvo or get something different. I wouldn’t even think selling a reasonably reliable car to a family member at full market value is a good idea, much less a very potential money-pit like a Rover!
Short answer,avoid the Land Rover like the plague, some years/models must be better than others but overall,low reliability, not even as a gift.
Same vote - keep the Volvo, no question.
No such thing as a Land Rover in “good to excellent condition”…Volvos may be as high as “good”. “Do you want to remain close to your brother?” is the question you should be asking.
Agree with others; if the choice is between Volvo and land Rover, keep the Volvo. If you have to have all wheel drive (AWD), I would go for a Toyota RAV 4 or a Honda CRV the next time around. Both are cheaper to buy and less expensive to keep running.
This has all the makings of a good “Judge Judy” episode - Brother Against Brother!: ‘Your honor, he said it was in ‘good to excellent condition’, but the week after I bought it I had to spend $2,000 on it!’
I remember watching the History channel and a presentation on the origin of the recreational 4 wd vehicles and they making the comment; “For more than one third of the entire population on earth, the first motorized vehicle they saw was as a Land Rover”. (paraphrasing)
I guess when a car breaks down that much, everyone eventually drives by.
In reality, the early Land Rovers were developed from the WW 11 Jeep by a couple of Englishman. I feel that as the years past and they got further from their roots and as more electrical hardware was used, comparative reliability to others decreased.
The military version, the Defender, is still a pretty good vehicle in stripped condition. When I go overseas now, the are very few Land Rovers left, the stripped down Toyota and other Asian Jeeps are bullet-proof by comparison and easy to fix.
There is a company in England that restores the original military/farm Land Rovers, the kind you see in old safari movies. Those vehicles are popular with farmers.
A sheik in Kuwait talked to me about his Range Rover, and said it was a town car and he would not dream of taking it out in the desert. For that they had Chevy Suburbans with heavy duty everything and dual air conditioners.
Land Rovers don’t have a good reputation, but your brother’s Discovery might be OK. Has he had many repairs done? If it’s been reliable for him, it might be reliable for you, too. Just be aware that they are more prone to failure than other trucks and are expensive to fix.