#LandRover

Ryan writes:

Sajeev and Steve,

I find myself perplexed by a vehicular conundrum. A year ago I purchased my first new car, a 2010 Subaru WRX STI SE. It is a great car. Previously I daily drove a 1997 Toyota Land Cruiser. Another great car. I drive about 20,000 miles a year, mostly on the highway.

My wife and I both work. We contribute heavily to our 401K’s and IRA’s. About a month after I purchased the car my wife decided to go back to school, for an MBA. No problem. She now has a year left. For the year we will be setting aside just shy of $1000 per month to pay for her schooling. This leaves us saving very little over the next year. We have emergency funds to last a few months should the need arise. I want to eliminate debt as soon as possible (currently 2 car loans and a mortgage, nothing more).

My inner cheapskate has become uncomfortable with the nearly $1100 a month operating costs of my beloved STI. My inner car guy misses the Land Cruiser terribly. I’m without a truck. Replacing the STI with another 80 series Land Cruiser or Land Rover Discovery I do not save much money because of the fuel costs.

I am contemplating selling the STI, and picking up a truck and a commuter. The commuter would need to be somewhere around $10,000 or less. Cash for one vehicle, maybe a loan for the other. The ideal commuter would be more comfortable than the STI, get around 30 MPG, have four doors and possibly be all wheel drive (for ski trips). Cadillac CTS? Lexus something? Nothing soulless, please. I can turn a wrench and can maintain both vehicles no problem.

What say you? Do I keep the STI and buy a truck when I can? Sell the STI, buy the truck and commuter? If so, what kind do you suggest?

See the attached spreadsheet. ( Ryan’s Car choices)

If you are on the market for a classically-styled English luxury vehicle with a compliant ride and a sticker under a quarter-million dollars, the Range Rover dealer might be your only destination. After all, Jaguar recently nixed the styling often referred to as “fussy” (but I preferred to think of as “dignified”) opting instead for jamming insane engines into sporty, avant-garde styled rides, Bentley has been churning out stiffly sprung modern sports cars lately leaving only the dueling RRs, Range Rover and Rolls Royce, to battle for our softly sprung anglophile hearts and minds. (Mind you, the baby Roller is considerably more expensive than anything coming out of Solihull.) With this kind of company, does a Rover have what it takes to be the ultimate in off-road luxury? Or will it at least make a more appropriate garage mate than a Jeep?

The first thing I ask any company that wants to do anything in China is: “Did you register your trademark?” Usually, they did not. I either help them registering it (costs around $1,000). If they refuse, I won’t work with them. It would be a waste of time. All too often someone else in China sees a value in that trademark. Being a “first to file” country, anybody can file any trademark in China that isn’t already filed – in China. Getting your trademark back is a long, expensive, and often hopeless case.

Ignorance takes another victim: Land Rover.

It’s a set piece, as predictable as the Beijing Opera: A rumor, confirmed by company insiders, followed by a denial, followed by – who knows. The Jaguar Land Rover flirt with China’s Great Wall enters stage 2: Never heard of it.

Rumors of Jaguar Land Rover establishing a production base via a joint venture in China have been around for nearly a year now. Talks with Chery surfaced last October, but were never heard of again. What’s keeping them? It becomes higher and higher time for JLR to start making cars in China. Deliveries of Jaguar increased 50 percent to 2,655 units last year while sales of Land Rover more than doubled to 23,459 units, reported TheTycho. Now, JLR may have found another bride.

Time was Land Rovers evolved at a leisurely pace, with a redesign perhaps once every decade or two, and name changes pretty much never. But, if you want some of those soccer mom dollars, this just won’t do. So the Disco II became the LR3 (on this side of the pond at least; in the more tradition-minded UK it became the Disco 3). And, just five years later, the LR3 was itself superceded by the LR4. Will the smaller LR2 become the LR3 when it is next redesigned? I suppose they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it. Perhaps they’ll toss the alphanumeric rubbish into the dustbin. The topic for today: what’s the LR4 got that the LR3 did not?

Do you live in a challenging neighborhood, like, say, Afghanistan, Sudan, Downtown Detroit, or St. Louis? Then you’ll like Land Rover’s latest offering: The new Discovery 4 Armored, a car impervious to road rage of all kinds.

Louise Roe was on hand this morning at the Jag/Landie booth, continuing the LA trend of hiring fashion professionals to flog cars. When did models become the vision of all things automotive? Especially when you’re showing something as unabashedly alluring as CX-75 turbine-electric concept car. Why invite the awkward comparisons? Anyway, as supercar concepts come, the CX-75 is about as cool as they come. Not only can it claim to be a “Jet-Hybrid,” it looks like it could seduce an F-16 too. Drool.

Rumors of Tata’s Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) establishing production in China have been around for a while. With good reason, Jaguars and especially Land Rovers enjoy (fairly) brisk sales in China. Now, these rumors move into the realm of the definitive.

Since today’s theme is the rapidly shrinking offering of genuine off-roaders available in the land of the free, here’s one that’s not on the list. That didn’t keep this owner from getting it registered in Oregon, along with several other “illegal aliens” I’ve nabbed so far.

When the Range Rover Sport was first introduced I didn’t much care for it. The shape wasn’t quite right, the interior was too cheap for the price tag, and for a model with “Sport” in its name, it just didn’t seem to have the thrust required even in Supercharged trim. Apparently the Landie headquarters was listening, so for 2010 the Range Rover Sport gets an overhaul, but does it take the Sport from an expensive plastic box to something Jeep owners secretly crave? The boffins at Tata lent us the keys for a week to find out.