New Range Rover 2024

[Samo Samo]

Not usually my area here but i have been hearing many reports about the latest range rovers, i had to get a Aston Martin started yesterday and the guy who owned it come and chatted to me while i was working out what was wrong, he had just come back from picking up his new range rover for the second time, the first time loads of faults come up on dash after short drive out of dealer, straight back, this time he arrived a little early, thy put it in the show room as it was a fully loaded model, he never said how much but it was not a cheap one and been on order for a long time, the sales man drove it out and this guy looked down and see oil on the floor where it was parked, he said to me he was so angry he told them to keep it and wants his money back.
i told him to get a Merc G Wagon.

 

[Grolliffe]

i told him to get a Merc G Wagon.

Why, was he a tw@t? they're terrible to drive, terrible to work on and terrible to look at - especially with the 'pram wheels' so beloved of wendyballers...
All manufacturers sometimes have issues with new cars, last week we had three come back in on the back of trucks - not more than 200 miles on any of them, all different models, one was a BEV, the other two were petrol - one was £100k+ (none were JLR). I think ot's more to do with the complexity and the increasingly 'outsourced to cheaper countries' build lines that are the main problem, not the badge.

 

[Paul d]

Why, was he a tw@t? they're terrible to drive, terrible to work on and terrible to look at - especially with the 'pram wheels' so beloved of wendyballers...
All manufacturers sometimes have issues with new cars, last week we had three come back in on the back of trucks - not more than 200 miles on any of them, all different models, one was a BEV, the other two were petrol - one was £100k+ (none were JLR). I think ot's more to do with the complexity and the increasingly 'outsourced to cheaper countries' build lines that are the main problem, not the badge.

Interesting that what you said .if the car manufacturers are saucing cheaper parts why is it the overall cost of these high end cars isn’t cheaper to allow for repair costs ..

 

[Grolliffe]

Because the cost of warranty liability rises - and therefore costs more over the warranty life of the vehicle. Cars ceased to be an engineering 'problem' at some point in the 90's, they became an accounting 'problem', which is why everything has a determined cost, not overall value.

 

[Grolliffe]

It's not just components, the actual build lines are moved to cheaper countries, with generally predictable results. Merc. have huge problems with US-built vehicles, a lot of parts are just left out, to the point where they issued a notice to dealers along the lines of 'if a module isn't responding during PDI, check it has been fitted at build before further diagnosis'. Then there's the Chinese 'built' Volvo's....

 

[SeriesG]

I think ot's more to do with the complexity and the increasingly 'outsourced to cheaper countries' build lines that are the main problem, not the badge.

Not to be argumentative that doesn't ring true to me. If the badge outsources their product construction to an inferior build line then who's to blame for the problems and reputational damage? They can claim its the fault of the suppliers all they want but it's still their product and they still have to take responsibility for it. Want a better reputation? Build a better product.

 

[Grolliffe]

I'm not saying the manufacturer (and this applies to most manufacturers, not just JLR) shouldn't or doesn't take responsibility for their products - which after all is mainly assembled from outsourced components, vehicle manufacturers (or 'assemblers') make few, if any, components themselves and if they do, it tends to be body panels & floor pans etc. The commercial decisions are usually along the lines of 'what value can we put on this vehicle, how can we build it with xx% margin and what %age of vehicles will have warranty claims in the first xx years?'. Effectively vehicles are now built to a price point, where they are built and where the components are sourced from clearly have some bearing on that price point, defective components in the initial warranty period are charged back to the supplier, the same goes for 'recall' components such as the Takata airbag recall across many brands, the supplier didn't suffer any reputational damage from the consumer - the brands did, clearly the same goes for defective components in warranty repairs. The only time the vehicle manufacturer can really be to blame is for design, fit & finish, NVH or build defect issues.

 

[SeriesG]

I'm not saying the manufacturer (and this applies to most manufacturers, not just JLR) shouldn't or doesn't take responsibility for their products - which after all is mainly assembled from outsourced components, vehicle manufacturers (or 'assemblers') make few, if any, components themselves and if they do, it tends to be body panels & floor pans etc. The commercial decisions are usually along the lines of 'what value can we put on this vehicle, how can we build it with xx% margin and what %age of vehicles will have warranty claims in the first xx years?'. Effectively vehicles are now built to a price point, where they are built and where the components are sourced from clearly have some bearing on that price point, defective components in the initial warranty period are charged back to the supplier, the same goes for 'recall' components such as the Takata airbag recall across many brands, the supplier didn't suffer any reputational damage from the consumer - the brands did, clearly the same goes for defective components in warranty repairs. The only time the vehicle manufacturer can really be to blame is for design, fit & finish, NVH or build defect issues.

I agree in principle and I think you're right on track with the routes vehicle manufacturers must take these days in order to turn a profit. Let's face it: the money made comes from financing and multiple years of dealer service, not in the actual manufacture of the vehicles. My only point is that the manufacturers can't expect their suppliers to take the heat for poor vehicle reliability - that's the responsibility of the badge itself and must be born as such. JLM is looking pretty bleak these days in terms of overall reliability and if they think they can blame it on bad suppliers they'll end up feeling it in their bottom line.

 

[Cliff4WD]

If "manufacturers" do not actually manufacture but instead choose to assemble outsourced manufactured parts, then they had better well make damn sure that they well specify and insist on stringent quality control. That will minimise issues to no more than if they made everything in-house. Problems without that control in place or in spite of it, are theirs to own. JLR have been feckin awful!

 

[roythebus]

It's not a new problem. I made the mistake of buying a new Range Rover, December 2002 on a 52 plate. It was nothing but trouble throughout my ownership of it. 4 new front diffs, 3 fuel pumps, 3 gearboxes, 2 aircon rads, front airbags, 2 compressors, 1 wiper mechanism,3 turbos, 2 sets of injectors, 2 body skin modules. Just looking through my indy garage's account over tthe years from 2016, I've spent £24k there on repairs including the £4k on the 08 car!! Worrying indeed.

 

[roythebus]

It's not a new problem. I made the mistake of buying a new Range Rover, December 2002 on a 52 plate. It was nothing but trouble throughout my ownership of it. 4 new front diffs, 3 fuel pumps, 3 gearboxes, 2 aircon rads, front airbags, 2 compressors, 1 wiper mechanism,3 turbos, 2 sets of injectors, 2 body skin modules. Just looking through my indy garage's account over tthe years from 2016, I've spent £24k there on repairs including the £4k on the 08 car!! Worrying indeed.

I did manage to get about 260,000 miles out of it, but at a hell of a cost, plus lots of breakdown recovery fees and the gearbox problems another £3k a time!!

 

[Grolliffe]

I agree in principle and I think you're right on track with the routes vehicle manufacturers must take these days in order to turn a profit. Let's face it: the money made comes from financing and multiple years of dealer service, not in the actual manufacture of the vehicles. My only point is that the manufacturers can't expect their suppliers to take the heat for poor vehicle reliability - that's the responsibility of the badge itself and must be born as such. JLM is looking pretty bleak these days in terms of overall reliability and if they think they can blame it on bad suppliers they'll end up feeling it in their bottom line.

As an example, the suppliers are on a high reliability contract for control modules, they themselves design and manufacture the modules, sometimes incorporating outsourced components, which in turn the supplier of those had given a MTBF of xx operations or operating hours. Now where this falls down and causes 'customer concerns' is when one of these modules is a gateway between several internal networks, if one of the transceivers that shifts messages between networks 'has a moment' and causes a module reboot, in turn causing all the networks to lose communication through the gateway, then that's an 'all lights on = car fsked' to the driver, but a minor component issue to the OEM, requiring either a redesign to make the component more robust or change of supplier for the same reason. Yes, its a reputational issue for the brands, a design or supplier issue for the OEM and a QC issue for the component manufacturer - and in all cases, probably within the reliability specification cascading down from the brand design department, so yes, the driver sees a 'big' issue, the brand will (hopefully) track it as an 'emerging concern' and push it to the OEM for investigation & resolution.

The above example is real and is still ongoing within the brand I worked for until yesterday - but it's not considered critical as there is no reduction of safety or performance of the vehicle. To date, there have been six iterations of the component with the gateway function, it's still happening. And cars are still being built with a 'known potentially faulting' control module, because they have no other choice.