Decisions decisions... Land Rover / Nissan / Toyota / Jeep

[Pheebs]

Sam and I are looking at investing in a 4x4 so once we've fully stopped with the whole motorbiking scene we can continue overlanding from time to time despite having dogs and potentially sprogs!

What it would be used for:
It would be our only and main vehicle so the vast majority of the time it's going to be our run around and used for renovating properties/trundling to the shops/visiting folks and friends around the UK. We do not commute to work as we're self employed.

We would, however, like to use it to do "smaller" overlanding trips (a couple of months to places like Mongolia/Tunisia/Morocco locations... in the future we're hoping to move to Canada so it would come with us and do trips around Canada/America etc as and when until we upgrade to something a bit bigger for a family)

Price Range:
£10,000 or thereabouts. We have a small Toyota Yaris we can exchange too.

Desirables:
- Something that is as economical as possible for general use (good MPG and cheap tax seems impossible to find with "decent" 4x4's)
- Sleeping Space (roof tent or cab type thingy)
- Reasonable offroad abilities (we're not looking for something top spec mega mega)
- Some form of Comfort. Considering it's going to be our only vehicle with the potential of pooches and sprogs it would be nice to have something that's not basic and harsh!
- Reliability and easy access to parts if needs be
- Diesel
- Mileage under 80,000miles but preferably around 60,000 miles mark

What we're considering so far:

Land Rover Discovery (LR3)
Land Rover Defender (can't remember which ones! The later versions!)
Nissan Navara
Nissan Pathfinder
Toyota Land Cruiser (Amazon? Potentially?)
Toyota Hilux
Nissan Patrol
Jeep Grand Cherokee
Jeep Wrangler

The ones we're looking at striking off fairly quickly/need convincing over are:
Land Rover Defender: What we can afford is basic and uncomfortable. Not ideal.
Jeeps (both): Issue with parts and servicing (pricey). We were properly frowned upon by the jeep dealer here as soon as we mentioned our price range and he quickly moved on to a middle aged couple before finishing with us. We've read this is a regular issue with them.
Toyota Land Cruiser: It seems impossible to find one which isn't rusting like heck or falling apart/super high mileage within our price range
Nissan Pathfinder: Even though we actually loved the size and feel of the car, it's busting our budget, not the greatest offroad, not great mpg and high tax (as with all but the pickups/earlier models of our list above). Might as well go for a family car instead we feel and save up for a overlanding in the meantime if we went for something like this.
Toyota Hilux: Sam's completely against the comfort of the Hilux. It's by far not the comfiest but IMO it's not bad for the price.

At the moment I think I am favouring the Nissan Navara with a kind of pop up cab on the rear. Very cheap in comparison to others as well as tax and an okayish mpg. Plus when we do have sprogs it's a bit more useable when the get older with a cab and beds as opposed to pop up tents (although I reckon by that age we'd end up looking at upgrading to something a bit more substantial and properly for overlanding trips only. But money doesn't allow us to have two vehicles at the moment ) Sam seems to think they're a relatively good in between option.

Sam likes the Patrol, again reasonably good pricing, easy on parts, seems to be okay on reliability. Problems I have on it: It's pretty pants on MPG. I did think it was bigger but it would seem not by much. Odd huh?

It's a very hard open ended question and I know so many people will have opinions but any thoughts and why to the above would be greatly appreciated. If we haven't considered any other ones and think we should please shoot them!

So cross eyed having trawled through so many forums and websites and reviews and visiting so many dealerships! Nuts!

Currently I think we're looking for a 4x4 made by Carling

Cheers guys

Clare and Sam
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