Of 4 Land Rovers, I still own 3.
1st/1996 D1 - love it, never stuck anywhere, still runs great with 190k on the od. Wished it had more power/torque space inside.
2nd/2004 DII - love it too but never intended to 'really' trail it too hard, but more for camping and road trips with capability if somewhere cool to explore. Love the handling, snappy engine, favorite of any current rover, gave to mom and now she won't give it back
3rd-2007 (MkIII) Range Rover Super Charged-not sure what I was smoking that day but thought I could 'make' it into something to equally replace the DII or and LR3 ... sold shortly after and didn't loose too much $.
4th-the 2007 LR3 with almost everything I could think of building into and onto it in a short time for off-road and camping purposes.
However, the LR3 missed lots of what should have been obvious items and became limited where the Discos were not.
Simple things like tire size mentioned above.
Tire size-What the hell was Land Rover smoking when they thought it smart to limit the tire size clearance to 31.7"?! and with that, no room left for snow chains and getting runs at full articulation.
Towing-neat idea but poorly thought through and/or executed. To leave a sloped driveway with a swing away bike rack in the receiver and scrape the concret is pretty poor design. It could have easily been a flush 2" within the bumper where the recovery loop sits with red points elsewhere. DUMB Design.
Steering-wierd handling characteristics - and this comes from a race car track driving and evasive off road driving instructor friend as well. His words upon first trip through fun curvy rolling roads "hmmm, interesting steering input and response..." When pressed, he was trying to sound as nice as possible about my new vehicle.
Really, there are to many wierd things about the lr3 to go on with here.
I like some of the high end model features but not at the loss of the basic stuff that should stay on such a "4x4"
One of the biggest things though is how underpowered the lr3 is for it's weight and with all the power plant options out there. TDV8, TDI, etc, or even a gas V8 with more torgue per hp. This thing shifts to 5th and 4th all the time on gradual highway grades. Seems to be a torque issue.