Cheapest 4x4 to buy & run ??

mustrum_ridcully

Seeing as no one else has said it yet... winter tyres!

sconieroany

mustrum_ridcully wrote: »

Seeing as no one else has said it yet... winter tyres!

Winter tyres would be no use in and around my village, the 3.1 bighorn does sound like an option, yep the smaller 3.0 engine was the one with the problems.

The new outlander is too pricey for a winter car.

Shortlist so far:

Jeep Cherokee
Landcruiser
Isuzu Bickhorn 3.1
Ex Mod or Utility Defender

freakybacon

Grand Vitara/Rav 4/Xtrail?

concerned43

I know - buy mine!!!
A '99 Disco TD5
PLEASE

blue_monkey_2

If you go onto Autotrader you can look at each item and then click on a tab to see at the running costs of them.

If you are anything like me you'll even set up a nice little spreadsheet so you can compare costs.

agrinnall

sconieroany wrote: »

Winter tyres would be no use in and around my village

I imagine that means you've never tried winter tyres. I live up a dirt track in deepest Perthshire and had to travel weekly to and from Aberdeen throughout the bad weather, my Panda with 4 winter tyres never had any problems with the journey and was at least as good as my neighbour's 4x4. Unless you're going to buy something that will go seriously off road (such as a Defender) you'll be wasting money for no real advantage.

Darlyd

agrinnall wrote: »

I imagine that means you've never tried winter tyres. I live up a dirt track in deepest Perthshire and had to travel weekly to and from Aberdeen throughout the bad weather, my Panda with 4 winter tyres never had any problems with the journey and was at least as good as my neighbour's 4x4. Unless you're going to buy something that will go seriously off road (such as a Defender) you'll be wasting money for no real advantage.

OH do tell me more about winter tyres. Sorry If I sounds Dim, But with my job I need my car to get to people's homes all year round, And when we had that last lot of snow, I ended up parking streets away to get to certain homes and sliding everywhere was a nightmare. SO I would be very interested in this. Cost? Just change them for winter? etc etc

As much as I would love a 4x4 (I leant my friends) I just could not afford to run it.:o

agrinnall

darlyd wrote: »

OH do tell me more about winter tyres. Sorry If I sounds Dim, But with my job I need my car to get to people's homes all year round, And when we had that last lot of snow, I ended up parking streets away to get to certain homes and sliding everywhere was a nightmare. SO I would be very interested in this. Cost? Just change them for winter? etc etc

As much as I would love a 4x4 (I leant my friends) I just could not afford to run it.:o

There are a lot of threads on here about winter tyres already as it was a hot topic for a few months! I decided to buy them after struggling the previous winter, I ended up buying a set of tyres on steel wheels that I swapped in October and swapped back in March - a good option if you have room to store the ones you're not using but if you haven't then tyrefitters will often do a deal where they change the tyres and store the others, obviously for a charge. I bought mine from mytyres.co.uk (although they're actually a German company and the wheels were dispatched from Germany) in the summer when there are good stock levels so the price isn't jacked up by high demand. I paid £260 for a set of 4, although that's for pretty small wheels/tyres, it'll cost more for a bigger car. I've just checked and they are about the same price now.

Igol

Have a look at Disco 1s if your handy.
Parts are easy to get as its basically a Defender chasis with a fancy bodyshell and as with any Landy theres a world of advice on how to fix them when they go wrong. As has been said unless you are a real full on pervert avoid the P38.

sconieroany

To shorten my list, I have decided that I want a LWB vehicle and I want some degree of comfort as we travel 120 miles to relitives in the north of Scotland, I don't need towing cabability and I will be looking for a pre 2001 vehicle so as to minimise road tax. I am also trying to look at "Bullet proof" engines as X-trails and some Troopers have a history of blowing turbos or worse.

This is what I'm looking at so for, comments on these welcome.

Izuzu Bighorn with the 3.1 engine
Nissan Terrano or Ford Maverick , also have strong engines and decent prices.
Jeep Cherokee, perhaps an LPG conversion ?.
Toyota Landcruiser
Toyota Hilux Surf , the later model is based on the Landcruiser and seems very reliable

Hopefully all of the above will be in the £245 per year pre 2001 road tax bracket.