Batting for the other team now.

Hi people,

You might remember my posts regarding buying a landcruiser hzj80r.

Anyhow, I have been toying with the idea of buying a Patrol too.
As it goes, I went and looked at a few vehicles yesterday and spotted a white 97 GQ Patrol with 17,862 drive away. Stopped and had a look, really clean, checked the odometer, 137 thou. hmmm. Then the salesman came and I asked him which engine it had. At first he said 4.2 then my eyes lit up but then he corrected himself 2.8. Anyway that really didn't put me off too much because I am not going to be doing any towing and I like to travel as light as possible. So I proceeded to look. Full service history and good desert duellers all around including new spare. looked underneath and she was as clean as the rest of the vehicle suggests. Next step, test drive. she drives beautifully and is very smooth on road until she goes over a pot hole then you hear and feel the notorious rattles that they are infamous for. But I don't think that is a major problem as long as it doesn't fall apart at the seams that is. So I proceeded to put a deposit on it subject to an inspection.

I have owned two landcruisers; a hj47 troopy which I really loved and a hj61rg sahara. which I equally loved. I still love the Landcruisers but for similar money, there aren't many diesel Cruisers out there with similar klms to choose from.

I liked the way the patrol drives and hopefully will not cost as much to run going the distance as an equivalent Cruiser with twice the klms in examples I've seen.

So lets jump the fence and see how the other half live for a while.