For what its worth, which I suppose is very little, heres my tpence worth;
My brother in law is a wildlife photographer and artist in South Africa and drives a 2.5 non-turbo diesel Land Cruiser, he swears by them.
I spent time with a guide in the Okavango in Botswana who loved his TD5 to bits! (He was a real local and had been driving 4x4 for over 25 years continually; he had never driven in a town or owned a licence!!! Come to think of it I dont think he owned any shoes.....)
I got a lift from a guy is Jamatland last June and he would touch nothing but Landrovers, though he freely admitted to seriously up grading the heating system for the Swedish Winter. (The current one he was driving had been on its roof/roll cage twice in its life, I suspect that was why he liked it so much as he was still walking and talking.)
I have another mate who races custom Landis, no point asking his opinion cus he is unashamedly bias. He reckons the best 4x4 concept ever was the original Range Rover, till the Chelsea farmers got hold of them.
I have owned for 12 year, and driven every day, a Nissan D21 4x4 pickup and it has never gone wrong once, even with 140K on the clock and very irregular servicing for the last 5 years.
My uncle had Hi-Lux on his farm and stated, in his opinion, they were more practical for dairy farmers than landrovers.
The point is this, vehicles are a lot like women, when you have had a certain good experience with one; they become your type. (You also remember your first one with rose tinted glasses, even if she turned out subsequently to be a bitch.) You also tend to forget all the ones in between the first and your current one, or is that just me?
I doubt, given the state of modern automotive technology, that you could buy a complete lemon 4x4 nowadays. Whats much more important, excuse the pun is what you do with it!
If you keep the vehicle serviced properly and know how to drive it well, ( In my experience, having a 4x4 doesnt mean you get stuck any less, I just get stuck in more remote places!) it will do the job. (Obviously this excludes all modern thin tired, alloy wheeled, urban insult SUVs)
I still have a soft spot for Defenders thou, but hell Im British!