It shouldn’t take out an engine, unless there were other ‘issues’.
Quite often water pumps are run by the timing belt – very common for them to seize and take out the timing in one go. Not sure on that engine, certainly is on my new VAG engine. Indeed a family members 535i had the water pump pulley fail many moons ago, but fortunately it was an externally driven pump and made no odds as they could cruise off the road and limp home in fits and starts, but I think that’s getting increasingly rare now as manufacturers go more and more shrunk and integrated to save weight and size.
That’s an interesting link. What it shows, after a quick scout, is that the rangerover has almost identical failure rate and likelyhood, same average time off the road, similar mileage etc, as a Toyota Celica (but with a higher repair cost). The celica gets a rating at the top end of good, the RR gets at the bottom end of bad. Odd.
Reliability Index 293.00
Average Age 4.9 yrs
Average Mileage 56 230 miles
Time Off The Road (avg) 2.72 hrs
Average Repair Costs £517.88
Celica
Reliability Index 36.00
Average Age 6.08 yrs
Average Mileage 56 200 miles
Time Off The Road (avg) 2.83 hrs
Average Repair Costs £336.04
And everyone’s favourite bitching station, the Peugeot range, which is apparently notoriously bad…:
Reliability Index 58.00
Average Age 7.33 yrs
Average Mileage 64 960 miles
Time Off The Road (avg) 2.25 hrs
Average Repair Costs £185.09