Please do not laugh…my daily car is a 2.2d Evoque (got to keep Mrs B and Miss B happy…). It has now done 39k miles.

This morning, I left home and drove onto the ‘main’ road…and pressed the throttle a bit more to get up to 60. PING! Orange warning light ‘Restricted Performance’ and much lethargy.

Luckily, there is a local garage who also deal in LR products who were able to accept the Evoque into their workshop this morning, but due to booking, unlikely to complete any required repair until Friday. However, they were going to get it onto their diagnostic machine asap this morning.

The mechanic suggested they had met with this issue a number of times and mentioned split pipes or sensor issues most common.

So….I’m sitting here wondering what the issue is, whether it is fixable and how many pennies will it cost me….

Cars are great until they stop working…

Everything mechanical fails at some point. Forty thousand miles is a frigging long way, and only now there’s a fault. It’ll probably do two hundred thousand with only a few things wrong with it. And yet people still complain.

Range Rovers don’t break down, they merely fail to proceed.

It’ll probably do two hundred thousand with only a few things wrong with it.

Said no-one who had ever tried to run a LR product ever!

I read an article about buying £10k Range Rovers the other day.

“The £10k isn’t the purchase price it’s just a down payment on the maintenance.”

That’s true but the Evoque is a bit different to an old L322. Your mechanic is right in that it is probably something very simple…..but finding it will require £1000 of labour costs.!

This is why car ownership is a mugs game. If it were PCP’d or leased it would be covered and someone else’s problem and you’d be in a courtesy car. LR cars are not the only cars that have issues from time to time and has already been said often it’s something cheap, but the diagnosing and fault isolation is what costs.

“The £10k isn’t the purchase price it’s just a down payment on the maintenance.”

Indeed. I wish I’d kept the link to the reliability survey – various models of cars listed by the nature of fault and the costs of repairs.

A well rated car might develop a fault that turns on a light that requires you to drive to a garage and book in a repair that might cost a few hundred pounds. At the bottom of the list was rangerovers  – with typical nature of a breakdown being ‘absolutely refusing to move and having to be towed’ and the typical cost of a repair “£3000.” Not worst case scenario.. ‘typical’.

What amazes me is, despite that reputation, just how many of them you see on the road at the moment – the market its going to be flooded with second hand, out of warrantee,  notoriously unreliable, notoriously expensive to repair cars. Whats going to happen to them –  who on earth is going to buy them?

Car Mechanics magazine recently related a tale of a newish Range Rover that had been in and out of the main dealers to try and fix an electrical fault umpteen times without success. Eventually the fault was traced to a battery hidden inside the dashboard that wasn’t even mentioned in the service manuals, and required removal of the dash to reach. Imagine the bill for the diagnostic time alone.
One of the consumer affairs programs on TV featured an Evoke owner a while back, the car was only a couple of months old when it completely died in the fast lane of a dual carriageway.
I’d love to have the money to spend on an RR/Evoke, but I’d put it into something a bit less complicated in the electronics department.

My Freelander did this a few times (same or similar engine). The LR dealership said it was the EGR valve, but kept trying to fix the problem with a computer rather than replace the valve. They replaced the valve in the end. Car did another 130,000 without missing a beat.

We have a freelander that came up with the same message yesterday morning, picking it up tomorrow hopefully sorted after finding a split hose on the turbo.

who on earth is going to buy them?

Those who for (whatever reason) don’t pay attention to such things or care more about other facets of ownerhship? Plenty who’ll buy for the bragging rights and brand or other subjective reasons over the realities of ownership.

Many aspects of car buying decisions are not enturely rational!

Hope you get sorted OP.

my daily car is a 2.2d Evoque (got to keep Mrs B and Miss B happy…)

Theres yer prob reet there.

You should buy a car that You are happy with, doubt it would have been a RongRooverEwok.

🤷‍♂️

Some people will buy them for the image. Some will buy them because they have the mechanical knowhow to fix them themselves. I fell into the trap of the last category. It was ok for a while but I got fed up of spending every other weekend underneath the damn thing even if it was mostly just costing my time. I did acquire an impressive collection of very heavy duty ball joint splitters though 😂

On the positive side when it’s working properly a Range Rover is a truly wonderful thing to drive….!

Now on Subaru number 3. Outside of servicing, the only things I’ve paid for have been the bits that wear out in the fullness of time (basically brake pads and discs) one wheel bearing and a shock absorber.

Very pleased when a crack in the AC system could have resulted in £600+ repairs, but fixed as a good will gesture as it was a known problem.

Subaru will get more of my money in the fullness of time.

Only bought Japanese cars for the past 25 years. All have been super reliable, apart from one… It was a ‘Honda of America’ badged Accord Station wagon I owned in New Zealand. Imported to NZ from Japan, but was made in USA. WTF was I thinking?

Guy at work bought his Evoque took it for a trade in and they offered £36k less than he bought it for.
£1k a month!!!!!!!

This is why car ownership is a mugs game. If it were PCP’d or leased it would be covered and someone else’s problem and you’d be in a courtesy car.

Or…..

I’ve owned my car 8 years now. The depreciation has cost me a whopping £40 a month (and I’ll admit I paid over the odds for the car as I was in a hurry and didn’t even haggle, didn’t even get a tank of petrol!)

The complete list of problems is a split power steering hose about 90,000 miles ago fixed under warranty, and a new alternator at 115,000miles. And other than consumables the only things to wear out were a couple of suspension bushes and a wheel bearing.

It’s funny how for years everyone knew the expensive way to buy a car was to get a new one as the depreciation was so severe. Now it’s been re branded as PCP or contract hire everyone’s falling over themselves to pay hundreds of pounds a month!

Cars can be a pain. But as said they do a lot of work.
I have generally taught myself not to be swung by what car I really like the look of. Instead I buy something Japanese like a Toyota or a Honda.
Many cars seem to use the same of the shelf parts as each other these days just seems to be how they are all put together that’s the problem.

Most people buy cars by looks and fashion, which explains way there are so many RR Evoques around. I buy used and the first thing I check is the reliability. It’s easy to do now. I’d like to think this is why we’ve not had a problem for years, but there’s also a bit of luck involved. I’d love a Land Rover, as I need the four wheel drive bit, but wouldn’t even consider one due to their shocking reliability. I know some are fine, but many aren’t.

I’d agree with OP.

Cars are great until they wear a bit out and stop working 🙁

They also cost way to much.

I’m looking forward to the day when we are a 1 car household again.

A colleague has an Evoque. Let’s say it’s a good job we work across the road from a dealership. It’s been a bag of poop. Sold by the image, but the car is totally unreliable. I’m used to my cars just working without garage visits.

They also cost way to much.

How much should they cost?

I have friends who work for jaguar land rover and even their cars have to go back in all the time have stuff fixed that really shouldn’t break or go wrong on the age of the vehicles they have tickly knowing what the price tag should be.

Had a Mark 2 focus that lasted me for 10 years with next to nothing spent on it. When I did have to replace it with a newer focus on a 62 plate it lasted one year before it give us problems and then burst into flames and burnt itself out.

I now have a Lexus is250 which as someone said, being Japanese is amazing reliable and comfortable and as well screwed together as if it was built yesterday.

With all the information on the internet it’s really easy to find which cars are reliable and which cars aren’t, which makes no sense when people are buying cars from the bottom of the reliability list, they need to do a bit more thinking!

As Balance

My folks also against all advice have an Evoque.

A 2012 2.2 autobiography with all the toys

Their total issues in 80k despite a very poor service from town and country -not changing filters despite charging for them several times over …..then claiming it’s milage or time… Resulting in poor performance and hesitation.

Despite effectively not being serviced for a few years a good service had it running well again with all its 200bhp back.

On top of that it’s needed a battery and had water ingress into one of the never used front left or right viewing cameras.

It’s actually been a good motor for them.

Would I buy one…..naw

This is why car ownership is a mugs game. If it were PCP’d or leased it would be covered and someone else’s problem and you’d be in a courtesy car.

If you lease or PCP a car you’re paying a premium for a predictable cost but ultimately it’s you who’s paying for it to be covered. For you it may be a price worth paying but it’s not offered as a public service.

If you lease or PCP a car you’re paying a premium for a predictable cost but ultimately it’s you who’s paying for it to be covered. For you it may be a price worth paying but it’s not offered as a public service.

Or choose a car on PCP that has 4yrs free servicing,  or indeed just choose a car that has free servicing whether it’s a PCP or not ..

🤷‍♂️

You do realise the “free” servicing is just being rolled into the payments?

Luckily, there is a local garage who also deal in LR products who were able to accept the Evoque into their workshop this morning, but due to booking, unlikely to complete any required repair until Friday.

So, the place that does repairs on LandRover products is very busy. Who’d have guessed.

In fairness, the car cost me less than a new Focus or similar would have and this is the only issue in 3 years.

Japanese….my last car was a brand new leased Mazda CX5 (employer allowance…). It required a new turbo and camshaft at 12k miles and just over a year old.

You do realise the “free” servicing is just being rolled into the payments?

Obvz, is obvz.

Unless you buy it outright.. right?

Unless you buy it outright.. right?

Not really, in that case you’ve just paid for your servicing in advance.

Ha

@bikebouy my parents car had the service package for 3 years.

The fuel filter had never been changed since new despite exceeding time based servicing.

It’s a bit of a pain to change so probably didn’t want to do it.

Once I changed it it was a very different car.

Just pointing out that many manufacturers have deals every now and again offering free servicing..

No need to kick me in the pants, it’s just an option.

An option available to me last time I PCP’d my latest car.

And, like a lot of folks, I’m not bothered about paying for it “within” the PCP costs or not.. it takes the hassle out of the ownership.

That to me is a benefit.

Top Tip: Don’t get knarked at Land Rover products that are inconsiderately parked – realise they are not parked, merely broken down. Or conveniently placed for Breakdown service recovery for when they inevitably fail to start.

Please do not laugh…my daily car is a 2.2d Evoque (got to keep Mrs B and Miss B happy…).

There’s your problem.

But surely everyone knows the Evoque is only designed to be parked on the driveway not actually driven, it’s just for the neighbours to see. And if is driven then only on the school run which will only be a 10 minute walk home when it does break down.

Gotta love cars. We’ve managed to take what should be a functional, pragmatic mode of transport and turn it into something that’s incredibly easy to damage, super expensive to repair and seems to be more about image and lifestyle than practicality – jewellery on a big scale basically.

Why make cars out of easily dented, corrodable sheet steel then paint them with fragile, high gloss, decorative finishes for example. Why do we need mid-market cars that’ll exceed the speed limit by 50mph? Why do they have to be ridiculously complicated and difficult to maintain and repair? And why do people spend the price of a small house on a metal box on wheels? Just ridiculous.

And don’t get me started on the way we’ve turned over our town and cities to the car and barely bat an eyelid at the huge number of people killed and injured on the roads.

So…do you reckon I should avoid using the Evoque and use my GT3 RS as my everyday driver??? The only issue is that I cannot get my Genius 900 into the back.

Aye…right…

We supply stuff to JLR.

They are the only company willing to accept components with faults rather than delay a launch, as they say its cheaper just to launch the car with faults and do a recall later.

Toyota could not be more different. They want proof of quality, reliability and safety all up front.

Obviously things can still go wrong with Toyotas, but i know what i’d rather own.

If it’s the Ingenium engine, you may be in for some nasty surprises…