| Re: 97 landrover discovery Posted by David Moolenaar on June 26, 2000 at 11:44:34: In Reply to: 97 landrover discovery posted by Sean on June 26, 2000 at 02:25:20: Hello Sean, I posted a very similar question on this forum 2 weeks ago. My concerns were about the reliability of the Discovery model...I have read so many horror stories on this site and others. We just purchased a 97 Discovery SE with 35K miles. In our quest for this car we looked at 8-10 cars over a two week span. To my dismay EVERY one had lots of wet oil evenly distributed on the front undercarriage and suspension. The one we bought has a small leak around the rocker cover that will be handled by the remaining factory warrenty. I expect to be continuously dealing with small oil drips (you will find support for this observation throughout this forum) and will just throw down a piece of cardboard in the garage...;.( My suggestion to you is to do a full background check on the car...(Carfax.com) and verify that car has been properly serviced (Pre-Inspection by a Land Rover dealer). Our car did not have its 30K scheduled service ($600) so that was another bargaining chip. One more thing...the first Discovery we looked at was at our local LR dealer. It was beautiful and LR certified but was priced $4K over the local market. They were also offering free oil changes for the duration of our ownership...but hey $4K is a lot of oil changes...and the 1 year warranty is not long enough anyway. The salesman was very nice and knowledgeable but my experience with buying cars is that once the deal is done you are interfacing with the service department who does not care at all where the car was bought. Speaking about warranty...I purchased a 4 year 50K bumper-to-bumper warranty over the net. Check out www.edmunds.com and follow links to 97 LR Discovery models where you will be presented warranty options...I would not own this car without some type of extended warranty! Bottom line, shop around and get EXACTLY what you want. Expect to get 14-19 MPG, a slightly higher maintainence interval, and big grins driving around in the most stylish fun to drive SUV on the market. Good luck, |
