[Closed] Car choice, talk me out of buying a Navara

Is a 110 defender county no good? Or a late td5 disco ?

Pickups are crap.

Do Navaras still go through engines quicker than tyres?

Pickups are crap.

Navara = Chavara

End of thread

I've had one for 10 months now. Facelift 2010 Tekna 190ps.Excellent towing vehicle.
Everything is good except spares are bloody expensive, some are silly expensive, like somebody just made them up.

Buying new or used ?

New go look at a new ranger i am in love with the 3.2v6 diesel with allison box drives stottingly

Used- which end of the market<4000 conditions more important than the badge

If < 4000 i sugest lookig at isuzu tf pick ups.

Think carefully about what your doing with it though leaf springs are bollocks and crashy and only trucks i know of with coils and new are the landies and the walkinshaw l200s

Id avoid the souped up ( 160 and 180bhp) in both navara an l200 they lunch diffs and half shalfs like mad- they upped power and left drive train the same.

I had a Pathfinder which is essentially the same - never again, thirsty, expensive on parts, rolled and crashed around , needed a mortgage for road tax, low thirties at best mpg down to 25mpg normal driving
Plasticky interior

Spend the same money on a Disco (or other large 4x4), you'll get a new shape.

Far better at everything.

There is a pathfinder round the corner from me that is my zombi apocalypse getaway car.
Bloke who owns it doesn't know this mind but he's fat and slow so will be one of the first to go.

Why would a large cavernous estate not be suitable? Comfier, more economical, cheaper to run, nicer to drive? Why does it have to be a large 4x4?

Mate did his first clutch at 17k

Spend the same money on a disco - then you can spend the same on more repairs as repairs are cheaper but it needs more. Usually for things that you think were half assed from factory.

And im a landy fan whos default car would be a disco.

Says more about our mates driving style than navaras dun it bland ?

Wobbliscott. Estates are a bit shit at snow. If rig hog lives where rig people usually do he probably wants 4x4

Probably but it was a drain till it went

For 10k you could get a noce defender 300 tdi for offroading logging etc AND a secondhand estate car of your choosing, for bike lugging and stuff best of both worlds, and what ive done for the last 3 years

No doubt they are soft motors , always were

How about a Mitsi
I've used all sorts of 4x4 both work and home best if you have the money is Toyota then Mitsi & Suzuki............ landrover last always something going ****ing wrong 😕

Hilux used to be bullet proof not sure about the new ones used them for years. 1 went 6 months without a starter and required screw driver starting and it still ran like a clock work. 😀

For anything but load carrying id take a zook

Wuldnt touch a toyota or a mitsu - my go to workhorse would be an isuzu.

My heart and all round car would be with a land rover though

Had a Pathfinder when we lived in Australia. Did over 130k km in it from new, never had a bit of a problem with it, very reliable. Changed the crappy tyres to some Cooper's though.

All the above non pickup ideas are good suggestions but where will the OP put his work stuff. He says he has no room for a trailer.
You won't go far wrong with a Hilux and for that budget you'll get a decent one.

If only Ford F350's were available over here and @ £10k *drool*

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Does the 350 come in 4wd as well as 2

Last time i saw one on a gravel track in california it was stuck - trying to reverse up a slight incline with the rear wheels spinning - it was jacked up with fox shocks and everything looked shit.

Our ram 3500 super duty (twin rear axel) had to pull it out. -

Thanks for the comments I am going through the same discussions in my head. I do need a 4x4 I live in a town but I have a house that I need to get to in the country and the last three years we have had 3 months of snow.

This was my last Landy and I loved it with a passion it just spent a lot more time getting fixed than on the road.

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Lovely righog. Is it gone now i guess ? 2.25 diesel or petrol ?

2,25 Petrol, Yes now gone 🙁 , I prefer the petrol at this vintage.

My ideal car would be a Disco pickup, bit of luxury with practicality.

[i]For 10k you could get a noce defender 300 tdi for offroading logging etc AND a secondhand estate car of your choosing, for bike lugging and stuff best of both worlds, and what ive done for the last 3 years

[/i]

You won't get a decent Landy for £10k based upon the price of stuff I've seen.

[i]All the above non pickup ideas are good suggestions but where will the OP put his work stuff. [/i]

In the back? A load-liner if needed.

I love my Ranger. It's 12 years old done over 167k miles. Never let me down, been light on parts considering it's a work vehicle. Is good in the snow and ice (with good tyres and a bit of extra weight in the back)
Not bad to drive, you can have a bit of fun on wet roads. Most of our miles were done on the road but have also used it off when needed for work...Looking at getting a new one soon.

How about a commercial td5 disco without the rear seats?
I'm after another disco cause I can do any tinkering my self and parts are fairly cheap and plentiful.

I work in an hydro engineering company with a Mitsubushi L200 4work, a Nissan Navara and a Range Rover. All get lots of off road use. I typically get lumbered with the Navara....the least capable off road but it has far more toys than the L200. The boss takes the RR.

Think it is a 2.5TD, fast in a straight line between 40 and 80 in the right gear. Lack of weight in the rear means spinning up the rears is easy, so a bit of accelerator sensitivity is sometimes needed. If you get it fishtailing high no. of turns lock to lock mean lots of comedy arm twirling. Does 34 to the gallon. 'My' Navara in the Cairngorms:

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In any 4x4 you are automatically an arse if you don't actually need one. Even worse if you have road tyres. Sounds like you want an estate.

07 plate ranger here - love it.
It gets used mainly for hauling family crap, bikes and firewood + towing the caravan a couple of times a year.
It's not the best at anything, but is ok/good at lots of them.
I've had landrovers and vans in the past and I rate this better (for me) than all of them. As the saying goes YMMV.

Aye this is what my heart is saying

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But it wont fit the whole family

wobbliscott - Member
Why would a large cavernous estate not be suitable? Comfier, more economical, cheaper to run, nicer to drive? Why does it have to be a large 4x4?

needed a mortgage for road tax,

low thirties at best mpg down to 25mpg normal driving

Why didn't I buy a Navara then Nana? Could have saved me 250 quid a year taxing it- oh yeah my fishing rod hold all wouldn't fit in the load area

The place I work bought 6 Navaras a few years ago, 2 new the other 4 used.
They've all been unreliable and 2 self-destructed. Avoid at all costs.

mattzzzzzz - Member
Why didn't I buy a Navara then Nana? Could have saved me 250 quid a year taxing it- oh yeah my fishing rod hold all wouldn't fit in the load area

Presumably one of your Hydro schemes has sucked the water out that river Waderider? 😉

Don't recognise it - furryboots?

As for all the 4x4 guff that Big Ford thing is gross - probably couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding.

[img] [/img]

i have nothing to add except one time at uni a mate blagged a defender from the landrover garage in Aberystywth for a weekend
we ragged the shit out of for 48hrs even got to tow a siera off the beach at innas llas, after 2 days it was in poor shape

also my friend just posted thins on FB

I know the road tax is killer but if you want comfort and 4wd then surely you want a disco, rr, trooper type thing etc not a commercial vehicle. my limited experience of long trips in pick up s is not one of comfort.

bland - Member
Mate did his first clutch at 17k

Must've been driving like a ****. I'm just coming up 107k miles on the original clutch.

37 mpg.

I get 34mpg driving like a granny just on flat dual carriageway (not towing the boat). This is working it out with actual fuel and mileage, with a calculator, the onboard computer lies, big time.

Nothing negative BA Nana just laughing at myself that I discounted the Navara pickup as the load bay is 5ft and my rod bag is over 6 foot , I didn't know about the tax being cheaper and it was the reason I binned the pathfinder, they are cheaper to buy too so I'm just here kicking myself 😀

[url] http://jalopnik.com/5426122/6+wheel-range-rover-pickup-perfect-for-hauling-hot-air-balloons [/url]

Comfort and load space

Toyota Hilux, go for the HL3 2.5 crew cab, will do all and not break down

Talk you out of a Navara you say?

3. Family days out/camping holidays.

[url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7264155.stm ]How about this?[/url]

I cant offer any sensible suggestions as I drive a Defender so clearly have no ability to make rational decisions about vehicles, but If only ...[img] [/img]

Nice. We also had the "strangerover" v8 vogue pick up at the local blacksmiths for a while. Perfect vehicle. Went for 5.5k in the end.

Hi, I had a 56 navarra extended cab (small backseats rather than the full double cab) for a couple of years.

Upsides, i was impressed with the economy (30-35mpg) and performance. Went for the extended cab to get the longer load bay to carry a demountable camper (briliant but alas this one was too rotten) and the truck coped with the weight without any problems.

Downsides, back seat was very upright and not a lot of room for adults. Safety rating - appalling. One of the reasons I sold it. Handling when empty was not car like but then it's a pickup truck with leaf springs.

We have a volvo estate for the family car and regular things and to be blunt for 99% of the time it's perfect for us. Winter tyres have been fantastic in snow and ice.

Unless you are carrying a lot of building supplies or wood regularly or can afford the running costs for a discovery type suv, then, I'd have to say that a pick-up truck as a family car is a compromise I personaly wouldn't make.

Be different if I lived in the states or canada where an F150 would be my car of choice. I had an F250 for a while which was a childhood dream (who didn't want a tonka toy for real?). It was massive, heavy, left hand drive and I just couldn't use it enough to justify keeping it. Again, bought it to carry a demountable camper. Incredibly powerful but the only time I off-roaded it sank in a water soaked field.

Sorry, I wandered off. Me, if I were you I'd get a second hand modern estate car for all the family duties and an older hilux or other pick up for the rough stuff. Best thing I guess is to take a navarra for along test drive with the whole family. A friend had a double cab navarra double cab for towing a boat and supposedly for the family car but it's telling that he sold the truck when he sold the boat.

Blackmount - we pick the driest months to build, and that was in the middle of a drought. No water has been abstracted from that part of the river. Allt a'Choire Chais, about six kilometres east of Dalwhinnie.

Buying new or used ?

New go look at a new ranger i am in love with the 3.2v6 diesel with allison box drives stottingly

Used- which end of the market<4000 conditions more important than the badge

If < 4000 i sugest lookig at isuzu tf pick ups.

Think carefully about what your doing with it though leaf springs are bollocks and crashy and only trucks i know of with coils and new are the landies and the walkinshaw l200s

Id avoid the souped up ( 160 and 180bhp) in both navara an l200 they lunch diffs and half shalfs like mad- they upped power and left drive train the same.

Quite a bit of bollox spouted on this thread, but sorry to pick your post out trailrat, however...

The Ranger is 5cyl, not a V6 - think that will be my next choice of truck though. Nissan do a V6 3.0l auto Navara though.

Not sure what BHP the L200 is, but the standard Nav is 190bhp (not 'souped up'). I've had the odd look on a Navara forum and no-one I'm aware of has destroyed a diff, or half shaft - this was a problem with very early D40's, but has been resolved long since. I drive mine over the Cat and Fiddle most days and don't find leaf springs a major discomfort to be honest.

I'm at 60k and the only problem I've had was an ECU software problem causing limp mode occasionally - now sorted. I'm not overly careful with mine and consistently get over 30mpg (real, not computer) 40k+ from rear tyres, 50k+ from fronts, servicing every 18k.

Not sure where comments from others about Navs/Pathfinders being plasticky come from - no more plastic than any other car and acres of leather and more toys/gadgets than most mid-range family motors. Isuzus - now they are plasticky, L200's aren't much better and are built for hairdressers. Toyotas are good vehicles, but horribly underpowered.

As per usual, estate cars always get mentioned and pick-ups slated for load space - put 5 adults in your estate car and a tonne in the load bay, a 3.5 tonne trailer on the back and see how you get on - oh and good luck hosing the inside out when it's full of mud.

Pick-up's are brill - they have some limitations, but I've had 2 now and will have another one in a years time. As for the 4x4 - it's only designed to be used when required and does a decent enough job in mud and snow.

Somebody has built a hybrid disco/L200 😯

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and you can buy it.

[url= http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2002-MITSUBISHI-L200-monster-truck-discovery-3-front-37-tyers-crew-cab-no-swap-/300966731359?pt=Automobiles_UK&hash=item461303de5f ]Tricky Disco [/url]

My god, what an abomination 🙄

I've just bought a Discovery 3 down here in Oz, lovely bit of kit and far nicer than the D2 it's replaced. If you can get hold of a commercial one of those the it would fit the bill I think. I've always found defenders a bit too cramped, even though I love them, I couldn't live with one as an only vehicle, if you can live with one then Surely a double cab 110 is the way to go?

Check out disco3.co.uk for what to look out for there always appears to be a lot going wrong when looking at forums, but no one ever posts about a car going well and the parts prices are coming down to a reasonable level now.

Navara, probably lacking winter tyres!

As per usual, estate cars always get mentioned and pick-ups slated for load space - put 5 adults in your estate car and a tonne in the load bay, a 3.5 tonne trailer on the back and see how you get on

Pickups obviously carry more than estate cars, but less than vans which is why they lose. I reckon pickups are only good if you need both off-roading ability AND load space. Otherwise other options are better imo.

Be different if I lived in the states or canada where an F150 would be my car of choice

Just as rubbish over there, in fact more so. Single figures mpg. Ok petrol's cheap, but it's not THAT cheap!

I think its about $3.50 = US gallon > 0.832674 UK gallon > 3.77 litres

$3.50 = £1.86 = 0.49p a litre 😯

So a 10mpg F350 would be equiv to one of our 30mpg pickups.

Then drive it across the country... soon adds up!

Or if you need a tow capacity molgrips.

10k to spend?

Subaru Forester. Unless you are aredneck builder done good who hangs out at Llandegla

ive got a new defender 110 utility, and it would do all you are asking of it

commercial so £220 tax a year

but they have only done them for the last 5 years, first few years models were £550 yr tax, so i bought a new one, as there a re great deals about

I had about the same budget as you availbale, chucked it down as a deposit and then 0% apr the rest kind off

if you dont fancy that get a disco commericial that has a rear seat conversion for the weekends