One for the moustache-twirling riverboat gamblers among you this week in the seductive, they-can’t-be-that-cheap-can-they shape of a seductive L322 Range Rover with the V8 motor purring seductively under the seductively glistening bonnet, all for the seductively low price of £2k.
Right, that’s enough AI description bobbins, what have we got here exactly? As PHers who like to queue up for hours for a parking space outside a vegetable shop will know, Mr Clarkson runs around his farm in a V8 L322 Vogue. Admittedly, his Rangey is a TDV8 diesel whereas ours is a petrol, but it’s still a V8 innit. If our shed had been registered in late rather than early 2005 it could have been the Jaguar AJ-V8 in either 300hp or supercharged 400hp flavours, but as it stands it’s running one of the last 282hp BMW 4.4 V8s.
While we’re on the subject of standing, that’s not something air-suspended L322s have always been great at. Often they’ll choose to flatten themselves on the deck like a sulky dog that doesn’t want to be picked up. In this case however we’re assured by the vendor that there are no suspension problems. A quick squint at the pics would seem to confirm that. If anything, it might be standing a bit too high, but Shed will happily defer to the more informed opinions of our forum experts on that point. Whatever, Shed’s motto is that in life as well as in motoring you’re usually better off being too high than too low.
Boldly, the sellers of this one say that its engine and gearbox are also ‘perfect’, a big and potentially regrettable claim for any used car’s drivetrain, let alone an L322’s one. It’s good to read from a peace of mind perspective though, as long as it’s backed up by some sort of warranty (er which it isn’t). Oh well, you can’t have everything. Apparently you can’t have a working battery or non-leaking brakes either. These are features that even the most dedicated shedder would prefer to see in their canny purchases, but if these are genuinely the only issues here then you’re not doing too badly. An LR dealer will charge hard for any Range Rover brake fix but if it’s just a leak in the rigid pipes any half-decent back-street bod should be able to fabricate and fit you some new lines for well under £300. A Bosch battery for one of these will rush you about £160 from somebody like Euro Car Parts but a less well-branded alternative from the same emporium can be bought for as little as £65.
But what would you get if you did buy into this Vogue and, much to your amazement after sorting the brakes and the battery, you found that the rest of it turned out to be as good as it looks? Shed can do no better than refer you to another PH classified ad that he found for a different Vogue which says that the L322 comes with ‘five spacious seats and five convenient doors’. Shed would much rather have convenient doors to the inconvenient ones as they are far better at helping him escape the dangerous swishes of Mrs Shed’s long-range, telescopically-handled sniper saucepan. The car in the other ad had had five previous keepers who could, according to the ad or indeed had, ‘attest to its quality’. Better yet there was an MOT that was valid to the end of this month, viz October ‘24, thus (quote) ‘providing you with years of worry-free driving’, which is surely what we all want.
Back in Realityland, our shed will give you whatever percentage of the 282hp and 324lb ft remains after the best part of two decades slogging around o’er hill and dale, or o’er Britain’s far more testing public highways. 282 and 324 sound like good numbers, and they would be in a car weighing less than 2.5 tonnes, but this isn’t one of those cars so expect a 0-60mph time that might just about come in at under ten seconds and a fuel consumption figure that definitely will come in at under 20mpg. After half an hour’s perusal of his Vehicle Excise Duty chart, which he has blown up, printed out, laminated and pinned to his workshop door, Shed is bravely predicting that the annual taxation outrage on this RR will be £415. If he’s right with that, it will be a first.
What about the good stuff? Well, it’s certainly one of the cheapest V8 L322s out there right now, and it does look to be in the kind of nick you’d expect from an 82,000-mile car, but of course that’s what it wants you to think. Returning to our doggy metaphor, this is the one that gives you the irresistible look in the dog home, but as soon as you get it back to your human home you find that it starts barking as soon as the sun goes down and it doesn’t stop until it comes up again.
Any list of potential L322 troubles that Shed might put together, if only he could be bothered, could easily be doubled by any passably intelligent schoolchild, so he’s not even going to try. All he will say is that it’s two grand for a luxurious V8 SUV that would have cost sixty-two grand new in 2002 and more still in 2005, and that the only advisories on last February’s MOT were for a damaged rear reflector and a non-excessive oil leak. His advice to anyone thinking of getting into this would simply be to find a passably intelligent schoolchild, or just buy the blooming thing sight unseen and see where the hell it takes you. You never know, that place might not be hell.
1 / 4
