Defenders

[Barry]

Why do we not see more defenders here? Is it price? Is it reliability? Is it off road capabilities?

My dad drives a RWD Mercedes. It’s awful in the snow so he wanted to buy a cheap defender for winter. I looked around and the cheapest was £2,000 (10k dhs) and it was a horrible ball of rust. £5k (25k dhs for a driveable one). The farmers there seem to love them though. 

[desertdude]

It's because its got a crappy diesel engine out of a ford transit van and they want around quarter of a million dirhams for that. Not many other than rich diehard fanbois willing to dish out that much money for an anemic utilitarian vehicle that struggles at the best of times in the dunes.

Land Rover or rather BMW ( once again nothing good comes from BMW )shot themselves in the foot for the middle east market way back in 1997 when decided ti stop making V8 defenders. 

[shadow79]

the parts are rare and very expensive and when you buy a new it has nothing in it just a wooden bench in the driver side no dashboard nothing in the interior and its a rough minimum 3 to 5k in fixing those things only a driver door costs 1500 at scrap so who gonna need those heap of junk which i agree has lot of torque but almost no speed....

[desertdude]

2 hours ago, shadow79 said:

the parts are rare and very expensive and when you buy a new it has nothing in it just a wooden bench in the driver side no dashboard nothing in the interior and its a rough minimum 3 to 5k in fixing those things only a driver door costs 1500 at scrap so who gonna need those heap of junk which i agree has lot of torque but almost no speed....

A person who pays a quarter of million for one does not think if there are parts available for it at the scrap yard.

P.S: Adding to my last post. Earlier Land Rovers and defenders had a great presence here, in the early days was literally the only car that could survive out here and drive in the sandy terrain. This was when going from Dubai to Abu Dhabi there was no road and you basically followed the beach.

And you can say it literally built this country The army had them even the police had them, very popular with date palm and camel farm owners and not uncommon in the roads too.