Disco
I looked at Disco's pretty hard when I returned to the States after living in South America for a few years. A friend down there had a 1997or 1998 model Disco and we drove it through some really bad stuff in Southern Chile. The suspension was a dream compared to my 1988 Nissan Patrol! It really soaked up the bumps. Long story short, after looking at lots of them and also looking at my other favorite stateside truck, the Toyota Land Cruiser, I bought a 1985 FJ-60 and then a 1994 FZJ-80. I saw Cruisers in South America that had seen lots of abuse and basically zero routine maintenance (because folks just didn't do that down there so much), and they kept right on going.
I am not knocking the Disco, but I would say that it is relatively high maintenance. I know we sent my buddy's truck back to the shop in Chile a couple of times just to have the dealer "nut and bolt" it because after a long trip it would develop lots of squeaks and rattles. They would go all over that truck with the wrenches and get things tight again. After the next long trip on the Panamericana, same problem. Again, this truck was brand new.
Fast-forward to today. Another friend of mine has a 1997 FZJ-80 and a 1995 Disco. He will tell you, both are very good off road vehicles right out of the box, but the Cruiser has had far fewer trips to the shop and it will drive circles around the Disco in the rough stuff, mainly due to it having the factory locking diffs (front, rear, and center), which Rover doesn't sell. As he has said many a time, "The Disco is a great truck, and I really like it, but it isn't a Land Cruiser". We have taken our FZJ's on outings with the Rover club and some of his friends in the Rover Club are seeing how capable and reliable the FZJ is and are having buyer's remorse. The others are "die in the wool" Rover fans and you can't convince them that anything compares.
My FZJ now has 152k on the clock and it doesn't have any of those squeak and rattle issues the Disco in Chile did. I have done nothing but routine service to it and it is going strong. I am fully confident I will put 200k on it without problems. Then I'll find another FZJ-80 with low miles.
Rover's approach seem to be to build trucks that can easily be repaired in the field with simple tools by anyone with reasonable mechanical ability, while Toyota's approach seems to be more akin to "build a truck that doesn't need to be repaired".
I hear that the newer Rovers are said to be better than ever and the 1999 might be a great improvement relative to the previous models.
I like them both, but this is where I ended up.
Oh and FYI, my LC has had far, far fewer repairs than my 5-series! Yes, it's a Toyota, but it has more soul than any Camry out there!
Robert Callaway
Dallas, TX
'94 530im 143k mi
'94 Land Cruiser FZJ-80 202k mi.
"If I could have back all the time and money I ever spent on cars.......I'd spend it all on cars."