Head gasket blew at 42,000, necessitating a new engine!
Switch on rear window failed repeatedly after 20,000 miles meaning it would randomly wind down. Meaning I could never set the alarm!
Drivers' side window makes a grating noise, and never stays fixed.
Clutch went after 15,000.
Original tyres lasted less than 12 months and 12,000 miles!
Plus si many smaller faults I can't keep up with them all!
Having come from a Civic Coupe which went wrong only once in three years (and that was an electric window switch needing replacing), this was something of a shock.
It's somewhat less reliable than my Mark 5 Cortina, and somewhat slower too. Although it's a lease car, and they've had to pay for the bi-weekly major maintenance it seems to have needed, I still felt it didn't merit more than a "1" for running costs because it drinks more petrol than a 747. Any motorway driving at anything over 70 mph, and you can almost watch the petrol gauge drop.
The last straw came when the head gasket blew up eight weeks after a service, necessitating a new engine. At first I thought the engine was on fire, and actually stood there praying the car would explode.
I would never recommend one of these to a friend, unless they were in a "Brewsters' Millions" situation and had to get rid of a large amount of money in a short space of time.
Excellent review, my own freelander needed a new engine after only 33,000 miles!
Today the head gasket on my engine went at 38K miles. Numerous problems during three year ownership--rear window malfunctioning, car overheating time and time again for different reasons, first three months of ownership electrical system fried the battery. Back tire blew out after first two months. In and out of the shop too many times---brake pads are low standard so brakes had to be repaired six times during three years. I could go on and on, I would NEVER recommend ownership of this car to anyone, Land rover should be ashamed of themselves and should issue a recall on the defective engines before someone gets hurt.
Owned a Freelander (better call it FreeJunker) for 3.5 years. The problems on the car started on the very first year with an incredible noise coming from engine. After taking it to the Land Rover dealer I was told that the tires needed to be changed! Need to say that at the time I had less than 8,000miles on the car! At 18,000 miles the water pump broke which resulted to a 300 pound repair! Again the Land Rover dealer denied any wrong doing with the car and covered absolutely no fees towards my problem. At 29,000miles the head gasket went!!! By this point I was fuming with anger since the estimated cost of repair, came to 700 pounds! Needless to say that not even once the car was abused by any means. All service maintenances, oil changes.. etc was done by the dealer. Fixed the car and was lucky enough to sell it in no time.
It is absolutely UNACCEPTABLE for a car with 29,000 miles to need a new head gasket. Judging and reading from other landrover owners this is a very common problem with the Freejunkers and land rover should be ashamed for having this car into production.
I would never ever buy a Landrover again in my life! Not even if they gave me one for free.
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