Buying a 3rd gen RR

Am about to take the plunge and buy a post 2002 car with about £16k available. Any advice on what I should expect for that amount in the current market and any pitfalls woul be very much appreciated.

You've got a decent budget to get a good 2002-2004 car there so make sure the front diff recall has been done (Mine's just in having it done at the moment - its a free repair). Check for play in the front suspension bushes if its done a few miles. I've had to do all four drop links on mine.

The engines are pretty bullet proof being BMW units so not a massive amount to worry about there however gearboxes do go on BM's so make sure the ones you look at engage properly and there's no nasty noises.

Only other issue I've had with mine is the battery drain but thats all sorted now (was sat nav and also heater control unit) - telltale sign as P38, light next to park stays on. Other than that just make sure all the bells and whistles work and the usual car checks you'd do.

They are a massive improvement in my opinion, I love mine and its not been without its headaches (flat battery and wishbones) but I got it as a repossesion for not a lot of cash so beggars can't be choosers in my case.

If you're going for a diesel I'd recommend fitting a tunit tuning box or similar, mine's transformed the car it pulls so much more and MPG is up by around 20% from before.

Not too sure on how new a car you'll get because I've taken my eye off the prices a little but I do know they've gone back up in price a little which is bizarre in this credit crunch everyone's banging on about. They dropped below 10k for early petrols when I was looking and early diesels were around £12k but looking recently they seem to have gone back up by about two grand. I think its something to do with the higher car tax band being cut back to 2006 rather than 2002 but my guess is for that money you should be able to pick up a 2004 or even 2005 TD6 with touch screen nav etc if you look hard enough in the private sector.

Best of luck and enjoy it.

Mike

Thanks Mike. I am looking at a 2003 with a bit over 20,000 miles for the upper end of my budget but it seems that there is very little with moderate miles for less than about £14k. 2005 cars are heading closer to £20k. Good used cars are in short supply as nobody is committing to new ones at the moment. My timing is poor!

Interested in the Tunit. Would this invalidate a dealer warranty?

I'm sure you'll find a decent low miler for that money, again for some reason the mileage seems to affect the price as well, mine's done over 100k now and it'll go on for another 100,000 miles without much trouble no doubt (fingers crossed). You might be restricting yourself a little with the miles though because these cars are such a good long distance car most have done in excess of 60,000 but again they seem to take the miles a lot better than the P38's.

The tunit boxes shouldn't affect warranties as long as you take it off before you go to the garage (I hope not because I didn't bother taking mine off yesterday when it went in for the recall! - Mines well out of manufacturers warranty anyway as its over 6 years old). You can fit and unfit them in around 5 mins once you know what you're doing, I recommend them highly, had them on 3 of my cars now and once you've bought one its not too costly to swap to a new unit (Mine was £50 exchange with one fitted to my girlfriends old Audi A3).

Happy hunting anyway, can't wait to get mine back from landrover, they gave me a brand new freelander as a courtesy car which is a good car but just not in the same league as the L332's.