I get the impression that the design and marketing people have a terror of the countryside.

@ Chalky: You’re in danger of gettting me started on the lack of a sensibly priced green option!

All of these chargeable extras are what really makes the difference between a company getting buy, or making good money. It certainly hasn’t done BMW any harm. Bring the buyers in with a price that looks competitive and then get to work on upselling all the bits that really should have been there in the first place!

[rant]Take seating, for example; a BMW / MINI might be bought with upspecced “Comfort”, or “Sports” seats (as opposed to the standard “Agony” ones that no one in their right mind would specify). At least with the FF the standard seats are perfectly okay and you’re not going to have a BMW salesman saying “well, you’ll need to add Sports seats to protect the value of your investment”.

What they mean by this is that your vanilla BMW will be shunned come trade in time. BMW love proving their supposedly “good residuals” by comparing the prices of, highly specced, used cars with the price of new, pared to the bone, examples. If your car isn’t making a good trade in value, it’s YOUR fault for speccing it wrong [/rant].

Oh, back on topic! Yes, it’s not good. Even my dad’s old MG Maestro EFi came with a full size alloy (even if it was the size of a Smartie!), but LR are a lot better than many of their competitors as, when they are on the extras list, the options are usually either not to everyone’s taste and/or needs, or are taking things to extremes (personalised and illuminated kick plates anyone?! )

Lyonhead wrote:

Red Merle wrote:

No door pockets! Seriously?!!

I think he meant there are no cubby boxes behind a drop down door in the doors now but there are still deep pockets in the doors.

That’s something, but the secret cubby boxes helped me sell the car to Mrs RM in the first place!

Trommel wrote:

I get the impression that the design and marketing people have a terror of the countryside.

I had a tour round the Classic Jaguar/Landrover centre today. What an experience and what cars, 100's of them!!

If anyone wants a really good trip, go to Ryton,it is amazing and the workmanship absolutely brilliant.

You can buy cars too, e.g. Reworked donor 1950's Landy can be yours for a cool £78k and a Mk1 1970 Range Rover for £150K. That doesn't include a Duo Touchscreen, just an old radio!!

Chalky wrote:

To have to pay £270 for a full sized spare is bad enough
Snip snip

In truth, they ask but I never pay , its a deal breaker & they just steal a full size from another car

Bill Filters are in fact so good that in certain circumstances, when the ambient air is already polluted, a diesel car will tend to extract more particles from the air than it emits. Emissions Analytics worked with........etc etc

He who dies with the most toys wins...