Land Rovers are curious beasts. They'll drive across the Namibian desert being both fueled and lubricated by little more than some fermented sugar cane and some mashed up fish (for oil you understand), and yet the heater and the indicators won't work.
They take the most unbelievable amounts of abuse and keep running, and yet take them on the motorway and bits fall off them. When it rains, I get wet in my landy. And I still love it to bits. My heater doesn't work, so when it gets cold I will deice both the inside and the outside and wear a coat. And yet today it pulled me up a slope that felt vertical (I could see the bonnet and the sky) in 2nd low and didn't miss a beat. It felt like it could have pulled me up in 4th high!
That's the thing about land rovers, if you forget about the little things that don't work and enjoy the majesty of them, they're the greatest vehicles in the world. Even when you do think of the little things, they're still the greatest vehicles in the world.
I heard that the first vehicle seen by 60% of the third world's population is a Land Rover. That's got to say something. Oh, and 70% of the Land Rovers ever built are still running today...
What am I trying to say? Buy a Landy, download the workshop manual and get your hands dirty. For the record, most problems on a land rover can be solved with a set of spanners and, more importantly, a soft faced mallet...
Chris