Ed’s Car History: 2003 Land Rover Discovery SE

I have always loved Land Rovers. It is a car that you always love in spite of its faults. This was a great looking white/tan 2003 SE. It had all of the options but it had some real quirks. I bought the car with about 60k miles and sold it about 18 months later with 90k miles on it. It was actually pretty inexpensive to own – about $.25 per mile all in. That being said, it liked to be a headache. It actually leaked one liter of oil per tank of gas. I had to mats down in my garage to keep it from staining the concrete. When I went to sell the car the dealer quoted my $5k to fix the oil leaks and CARMAX offered me $3k for the car. I ended up selling it on Craigslist for $8k (with full disclosure of the leaks and all of its issues). It also liked to leak coolant and it had a short in the driver’s side seat heater that would shock you whenever it was on. Interestingly, at the same time as I owned this car, my mother was driving another 03 Discovery that was almost perfectly reliable and had no issues whatsoever.

 

 

Ed’s Car History: 1995 Land Rover Discovery

1994 was the first year that Land Rover imported the Discovery to the US. My father ordered one in 1994 that was delivered as a 1995 model. About 100,000 miles later this became my first car. It was fantastic. It was great off road, carried anything you could want, had waterproof seat covers, and was an absolutely perfect first car. It developed a pretty rough engine knock around 170k miles and gave up the ghost around 185k. Great memories in this one.

This is not the actual car but it is the right year and the right color. Mine had a brush guard, light covers, and usually a considerable amount of mud on it.