This is a barge I've always wanted to own, and one I don't think I'll ever get rid of. Last Christmas, I ended up getting one as a taxi in Long Island and was amazed at how solid it still felt, despite having very high mileage. I made up my mind to get one once I returned home, but I quickly realized how difficult it was to find a facelift one in good condition. The front of the pre-facelift ones remind me a bit too much of the MK2 Mondeo, so those were all ruled out, and I wanted one in black with a cream interior, which narrowed things down more. Virtually all the facelift ones here are imported, which means you can virtually guarantee they've been written off in the US or had 300k+ taken off the odometer. After a long time searching, I finally found one. It wasn't perfect: it was missing paint on the rear bumper, it had some dents in the wing, the remote locking wasn't working, plus the door cards and front seats weren't in great shape. On the plus side, it had the original invoice from the main dealer in my city, and it had spent most of its life with the same person who'd bought it new. Mechanically, it felt very good, and there were no warning lights on the dash. The seller was a part time used car dealer trying to pass it off as his own car. A quick search found that he'd only owned it for a couple of weeks, and had bought it for a fair bit less than he'd advertised it for. I knew the car was a good one though, so after a bit of negotiation it ended up coming home with me. Once I got it home, I set to work fixing some of the issues. First of all, I got the dents in the wing pulled out, and the bumper painted. Then, I started to do some research to find out why the remote locking wasn't working. After paying a couple of people who wanted to rip everything out and install an aftermarket system, no doubt breaking a million clips and causing endless rattles in the process, we managed to trace the fault to the driver's door module. This proved impossible to find in Mexico, but a very kind member of the Lincoln group in the US mailed me one for free. It was simple to change, and immediately fixed the issue. Other than the issues it had when I bought it, only one other thing went wrong in the last 10k miles: the rear window regulator failed. I stopped at a little roadside shop and they fixed it for the equivalent of about £20. This is another huge advantage of having a car like this as opposed to something European: parts are readily available and extremely cheap. I've driven this car an awful lot since buying it: it's been to all the surrounding states, and soaks up the terrible quality roads with ease (the ground clearance and 60 profile tyres are a big help). It feels totally solid, and doesn't rattle over bumps whatsoever, unlike my far newer and lower mileage Lincoln MKZ I had before. I'm planning on visiting the junkyards of Texas in a few weeks, in the hope of getting new front seats, armrest, door cards and steering wheel to make the interior look like new. It's definitely a car I have 100% confidence in - I'd happily get in and drive it to Canada tomorrow if I had the time, and I'd like to get it looking as close to new as possible.

Never did a thread for this on PH, although I did mention it in a few topics. I thought it might be nice to add some content to the new forum, so here goes. I'll do one for my Lincoln as well in a minute. This is my supercharged L322, which I bought for around 1k, having knocked the owner down from around 5k. Why was it so cheap? Well, the air suspension had collapsed, the engine was knocking, it had various warning lights on the dash, and felt like it had about 80bhp instead of the 400 it's supposed to have. This is how it looked when I picked it up: I suspected the knocking sound wasn't actually the engine itself, but the supercharger, so we took it apart to get it looked at. One supercharger rebuild later, and the knocking stopped. I also changed the coils and plugs which restored the power: it now pulls just as well as the other SC Range Rovers I've had before. Then, it was time to sort out the suspension. Everyone tells you how important it is to keep the air suspension, but with the state of the roads where I live and the extreme temperatures, you just end up chasing constant leaks, so I opted for an Arnott coil conversion. I'm really happy with it - it rides nicely and is more than high enough to clear any obstacles I'm likely to encounter. When I bought it, it had four different tyres, which probably wasn't doing the differential much good. I decided to change them, and encountered an issue which seems very common on JLR vehicles: the wheel nut covers round off easily and often spin without actually turning the wheel underneath. This particular locking one wouldn't budge at all, and it took two separate shop a total of around 8 hours to remove it. Finally though, we got it sorted, and I put the new, slightly higher profile tyres on which have absolutely transformed the ride. Since then, I've just been using it for general work on my land and a few road trips and it hasn't put a foot wrong. It still has a few minor issues (could do with a new key, rear light is cracked, etc) but I considering I'm only about 2.5-3k into it including the purchase price, I think I've done pretty well. MPG-wise it's pretty bad as you'd expect, but that's partly my lead footedness. Here's a few pictures to finish off with.