wri t es Simon says
by Simon Hastelow
Relative values
When you read about the details of the new Defender V8 earlier in this mag you probably muttered “How much?!” like most other people. It is true that, compared to a base spec New Defender, it is not that much of a higher price tag for such an awesome package, but that’s only because the base spec. version is also way overpriced.
I have never bought a brand new Land Rover, in fact the only new car I ever bought was a 2013 Fiat Panda. We needed a runabout and the dealership were offering them at £99 deposit and £99 per month. At the time I was spending anywhere between £200-£300 per month in diesel alone for my two Land Rovers so I could just about categorise the Panda as free motoring. Other than that, the closest I got to a new car was buying
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THE MUD LIFE MAGAZINE
an ex-demo 1997 Land Rover Discovery S 300TDi Auto which was just 6 months old. It cost me £22,000 and the new price was around £28,000. It was mid-range in the Land Rover fleet; not a pauper-spec car, but neither was it a Range Rover. I could have bought a similar age Defender 110 for a bit less money; equating that to prices/values at the time it was less than my annual salary and easily affordable. However, in the intervening 24 years the prices of similar cars from Land Rover have more than doubled, but my income, or even the national average income, has not. To drive away even a basic Discovery I would need to find a deposit of £12,000, pay £550 every month for four years and still owe £24,000 at the end of it. More than the cost of my 300TDi Discovery in 1997!
