Jose, you obviously bought a nail mate. Sorry for you that that was the case, but then alot of ex-utility stuff can be very abused by guys who dont own their trucks, hence the enourmous service history you said came with it. What a lot of people dont realise when buying a land rover is that you are paying for a tractor with some on road bits put on it. Off road they are absouloutely the final word (for work that is- i refuse to comment on the girly greenlaning thing). The chassis is better than any other 4x4. The power delivery in low box is absoloutely unrivalled (except maybe landcruisers), and they are soooooooo cheap to repair- recon r380 box, 640 fitted inc vat, 1700 to buy plus fitting and vat for nissan, toyota etc. The reason that jap stuff lasts so much better is that they dont and cant do what a defender can. Most NEVER go off road. That is why they are built like cars- small cabs, car like driving position. Permanent 4x4 allows the largest towing capacity in their class (ok-landcruiser again), and the chassis is almost indestructible, unlike the hi-lux, l200 ranger things which are, in comparison very lightweight. Reliability-wise? Look after then, and they more than look after you. My toyotas have benn NO MORE reliable than my landrovers, and my mates ranger has been beset with problems from the start, but being what it is he is stuck with it as the second hand value is so low.
My landrover garage has the contract to service all the landrover that the china clay companies use. Daimler-benz who own the fleet (not sure why) were pissed off that some landy's were getting the correct resale value at auction age 3 years, whereas the ones running 24hrs a day an totally abused by the workers were being scrapped after three years. So they changed to ford rangers. Within 4 months they had got rid of the lot and tried to go jap. Neither nissan nor toyota would put their vehicles in that environment as they deemed it too extreme (2 weeks for a set of brake discs, 3 days for pads in the worst conditions-lots of silica). Back to landrovers. They now understand why landrovers are the choice of Aus army, British army, extreme off roaders worldwide and countless others.
Landrovers in Australian Army Service Part One by Paul Handel