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A more positive dealership tale I have, is that of a UK manufacturer of cars and engines. They monitor warranty claims very carefully and on the engine side were unhappy about incorrect diagnosis of engine faults at their dealers. They gave feedback to the dealers in order to improve their understanding, methods and training but this wasn't as effective as they needed it to be.

For a period of time, to really understand what was happening, they formed a team from the Engine plant and instructed all the dealers within a two hour drive to hold any engine work to allow them time to get there and watch / assist with the diagnosis. This ran for enough time to allow them to understand what was happening and assisted greatly in the correct diagnosis and repair of engine issues that in many cases would have been incorrect and excessively complicated and costly.

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Back when I worked for an insurance administration group running extended car warranties, we used to flag back all "excess" failures back to the manufacturers, (and made ourselves very unpopular, as we would go to Court after too much of a pushback), pushing them to recall, modify or warranty fix regular failures. Cars with issues then you may remember (1990-96), Lotus Elan (FWD), Renault Megan, Renault Clio, Renault Espace, Renault Scenic, BMW 5 series with nicasil coatings, Vauxhall Astra, Vauxhall Vectra, Ford Ka, Ford Fiesta and probably 2 dozen others I don't remember.

The Elan I remember very clearly as it was a shocker; the drivetrain was bombproof, (Isuzu), but there were issues with paint, panels, electrics, hood, soft trim and dampers. The average US warranty claims were £3500 per car. You may remember the car and the tooling were sold to Kia.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Referring back to the original question I'll relate my own experience. My first foray into a brand new Land Rover product was 2015/2016 with a RR Evoque. I'd heard/seen many tales of doom and, in fact, had gone along to the LR Dealer to buy one of the last Defenders.

In a moment of over-excitement I ordered an Evoque.

Four  near-faultless years later I ordered a Defender. After reading  many tales of woe about the infotainment system in Velars I saw they had moved to the (allegedly) all-singing Pivi-Pro system. Oh dear. Many navigation-related faults have appeared from day 2 of ownership.

I've had it a month now. The vehicle is great but lock-downs have prevented me giving it a proper workout.

Summary; lovely to drive, solid, well finished but these Pivi-pro navigation problems are leading me to think that I may have several visits to the Dealership. Hopefully they can be fixed and my worries disappear. At the moment I am not entirely confident.

My dealership is 40 miles away and that's annoying enough. If I lived further away I would probably consider an alternative.

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5 hours ago, Maverik said:

Hi Jeremy, being one of a minority on here actually owning one of these vehicles, your feedback is of great interest, keep it coming, especially interested on how you get on fixing some of the niggles you're getting. Get some pictures of it uploaded :)

 

Mav

Echo that. Great to see a new forum member and also great to see a new LR owner :D. Maybe time for a thread in the Members Vehicles thread? I'd certainly be interested to see how it all goes :) .

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Agree, good to hear true stories from an actual owner.

I have a feeling lots of modern cars suffer software issues as they try to cram more & more in to appease the smartphone generation, these days there's probably more man-hours and lines-of-code in the "infotainment" than there is in the rest of the car!

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I swear modern car manufacturers are their own worst enemy with software - the more of it you shovel into the thing the worse your reliability is going to be. I'd rather they threw the whole infotainment thing in the bin and just gave me a hole in the dash that holds a phone/tablet where I can see it & poke it, and some way of connecting it to the speakers. They must waste millions on this junk and by the time it's out it's 5 years behind a £100 Android tablet.

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58 minutes ago, FridgeFreezer said:

I swear modern car manufacturers are their own worst enemy with software - the more of it you shovel into the thing the worse your reliability is going to be. I'd rather they threw the whole infotainment thing in the bin and just gave me a hole in the dash that holds a phone/tablet where I can see it & poke it, and some way of connecting it to the speakers. They must waste millions on this junk and by the time it's out it's 5 years behind a £100 Android tablet.

Absolutely! I have a 2019 iPhone in a 1989 110CSW. The iPhone is plugged via the AUX socket in a Awia stereo bought for its ability to drive 4 big speakers loudly. It copes well with Wase and Spotify, which is about as much as I want in a car.

I can think of more than a few people with modern cars and in-car entertainment who just hook up with Apple Carplayer or the Android alternative and never delve into the menus of the fancy screen screwed into the car, notwithstanding that the additonal functionality has cost them about £1500. 

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10 minutes ago, jeremy996 said:

Absolutely! I have a 2019 iPhone in a 1989 110CSW. The iPhone is plugged via the AUX socket in a Awia stereo bought for its ability to drive 4 big speakers loudly. It copes well with Wase and Spotify, which is about as much as I want in a car.

I can think of more than a few people with modern cars and in-car entertainment who just hook up with Apple Carplayer or the Android alternative and never delve into the menus of the fancy screen screwed into the car, notwithstanding that the additonal functionality has cost them about £1500. 

Exactly the same as me. I am just in the process of making a tablet holder for a 7inch tablet with GPS for the 110 so i have a marginally larger screen. I am seriously thinking of ditching the radio for a hidden amp unit (the aerial was broken - I think in 2016 and i only use it for the aux socket!)

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8 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

I swear modern car manufacturers are their own worst enemy with software - the more of it you shovel into the thing the worse your reliability is going to be. I'd rather they threw the whole infotainment thing in the bin and just gave me a hole in the dash that holds a phone/tablet where I can see it & poke it, and some way of connecting it to the speakers. They must waste millions on this junk and by the time it's out it's 5 years behind a £100 Android tablet.

Exactly what Gordon Murray has done with the T.50. 

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I must admit I'm wobbling on the fence regarding the technical/electronic/display aspect.

I'll put to one side the perpetual mines-bigger-than-yours  showroom competition between manufacturers. KIS.  In many cases it's flashiness over function and rush-to-market. I guess it's always been that way but flashy tech really shows it up.

You could just fit an iPad on a stick ... oh, hang on, it would look like one of those electric cars.

There are upsides to fancy integrated electronics and displays.  But it's got to work reliably and it should be properly tested in manufacture, after assembly and at PDI.

A couple of the faults with mine could have been found at PDI in 5 minutes if  a check had been put on the to-do list. Maybe they did but any delay would have delayed delivery to me. Mmm.
LR products are not cheap to buy, but the warranty work must cost them a packet. (Maybe that explains the price).

Time for the roast potatoes and just say that, day to day, the vehicle is a joy to drive. I just hope that most of my driving isn't to the dealer.

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But if they made and android and ios compatible interface (like ODBII I suppose) then they could pack standard features in and apps for additional ones? That would even enable bug updates etc much more rapidly than via a dealership.  

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16 hours ago, reb78 said:

But if they made and android and ios compatible interface (like ODBII I suppose) then they could pack standard features in and apps for additional ones? That would even enable bug updates etc much more rapidly than via a dealership.  

I think mitsubishi did something pretty similar, I remeber helping my mate with his new pickup and it was almost like a Android interface. 

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4 hours ago, landroversforever said:

It’s already available with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay interfaces. 

As a basic mirror thats fine but you could add vehicle specific apps that could perform a lot of the functions that are built into the vehicles system at the moment. Updates to these to iron out bugs could be  done via the app/play store then. Much easier than via a dealer?

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10 minutes ago, reb78 said:

As a basic mirror thats fine but you could add vehicle specific apps that could perform a lot of the functions that are built into the vehicles system at the moment. Updates to these to iron out bugs could be  done via the app/play store then. Much easier than via a dealer?

Plenty of cars are doing over-the-air updates now (LR, Tesla, Mercedes, ...)

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Yes, mine is meant to do SOTA but refuses. This is why it's going back to Dealer again.

The only potential problem with AA or ACP is that there obviously needs to be a software/firmware/hardware interface in the car. And if all the software was outsourced the vehicle manufacturer may lose control of display format.

The Android Auto in my Defender works perfectly, but visually is not a patch on the fancy stitched photo maps you get in the Pivi-Pro driver's display. This on the speedo display so you barely have to move your eyes.

The display hardware is very good, the audio (sound and voice) is very good but it's let down by odd (navigation related) software behaviour in mine. It doesn't behave as advertised.

HERO PRODUCT FILMS - LA NUOVA LAND ROVER DEFENDER from Jaguar Land Rover Newsrooms on Vimeo

 

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14 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

And over-the-air-disabling-features-you-thought-were-standard :angry:

That's Tesla and BMW (for now)... Indeed ridiculous.

Anyway, I'd be slightly worried to allow a phone to have access to anything more than basic infotainment stuff in a car.

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Yeah I just want a car that does car things with minimal bullsh*ttery and they can just bolt a half decent amp & speakers into it with a an Aux socket and a USB port for charging and save me £1500 in obsolete and clunky technology stuffed into the dash.

Then again I'm clearly in the minority these days as car adverts say nothing about the cars whatsoever but big up the fact you can connect it to your bl**dy social meeja feed and tweet while you drive. :rolleyes:

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To the O/P in America 

l might get some stick for this but, 

Have you looked at the LWB Jeep Wrangler? lt's the same sentiment as a Defender and seems reliable enough.

Plus it's a fair bit cheaper. And they look great apart from the huge front bumper, but that can be replaced with a better looking one.

 

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