By Brian Byrne

Although made quite visible at the National Ploughing Championships, where it excited a lot of interest, it is only recently that copies of the new Land Rover Freelander have been appearing in showrooms across the country. The key to a really successful sales launch for this car will be getting potential customers into them.

The original Freelander, though the best-selling model in the brand, had rather been left behind by developments further up the manufacturer’s models range, Discover 3 and Range Rover Sport.

Not any more, it isn’t. The new one is set to leapfrog its way into becoming a benchmark in its own right in the compact SUV segment.

They say they’ve retained many styling cues from the older version. Maybe they have, but it is the new cues that come direct from the ethos of the two larger siblings that really set this one off in style terms.

The grille, rear lights, the whole stance of Freelander 2 shouts out loud that it is today’s and – for some time to come – tomorrow’s car.

It looks a lot bigger, but isn’t much so in length, a mere 50cms. The body-coloured bumpers ease off from any sense of intimidation, but, at the same time, it is all the way a purposeful-looking beast.
At the back, where there are clear elements of Range Rover Sport, the moving of the spare wheel from the back door has also made it a nicer vehicle. That also allowed the designers to switch from a side-hung door to a hatch.

Inside, anyone familiar with the Discovery 3 interior will feel right at home. Almost all Land Rover dashboards now have a commonality of design and usability (the Defender will get the treatment in March, rounding off the full range). The style is strong, the materials and finish to high quality standards. If I have a crib, it is that – in all the cars – the figures on the speedometer are too small. This is more than a complaint of ageing eyes, the graphics actually are out of proportion with the rest of the dashboard design.
It’s a small thing. So too is an improvement, but the small things make for big improvements; a tall person no longer has to worry about bashing his head off the A pillar on climbing into the car.

The driving position is also better: the old car’s seat was too high, and for said tall person the eyes were too close to the top edge of the screen.
A new familiar is the Terrain Response knob, smaller than that in the Discovery and Range Rovers, and without a ‘Rocks’ position, because Freelander 2 doesn’t come with a liftable suspension.
Small crib here, too: the graphics and their lighting around the control are a little small and dim; but the positioning is repeated on the instruments panel, so you should quickly get used to it.

All occupants of Freelander 2 get much more space than before, noticeable especially in the back seats. And luggage space for their bits and bobs has increased by more than a third.
The powertrains are all new. From a marketing point of view, the absence of 2.0-litre or less petrol unit may present its own difficulty in Ireland, but that is part of the new position of Freelander 2. Entry to the range is now with a 160hp 2.2-litre diesel, originated in the extraordinarily successful Ford-PSA partnership, and the first application of it. If you want petrol, you get an all-new 233hp 3.2-litre straight six, which is quite one of the sweetest engines I’ve driven this year.

In truth, petrol sales of this new Freelander will likely be quite small here. No matter, the diesel is top of current technology, and a real smooth and powerful performer.
None of these larger engines mean a sacrifice in economy. The diesel runs a 7.5 L/100km average on road, a really respectable economy, and with an amazing 400 Nm of torque, it motors the car along in a very easy manner. Indeed, I should mention how even the power band works, with no untoward surges evident. The petrol engine, though much larger than the old BMW 2.6-litre V6 it replaces (very few of those were sold here either) is ten per cent more frugal.

Lacking a low-ratio set of gears for off-road, the new Freelander isn’t designed for extreme conditions, but that doesn’t stop it going to places that are still very much off-road. It was always a nameplate the punched a bit above its weight in these terms, but the new one will likely go where no Freelander has gone before.
The Terrain Response helps. So also does the Hill Descent system that was pioneered on the predecessor car. I drove Freelander 2 on rocky and gravelly tracks, through some nasty water, and in to mud that it easily took me out of. Colleagues who have driven it on beach sand are also impressed.
I also drove the diesel version on a couple of long trips, and it proved to be a really fine touring machine. ‘Son of Range Rover Sport’ would be very much an apt suggestion. Ride and overall handling is to the level of a luxury estate than a typical offroader.
In several respects, Freelander has been taken out of its traditional competitor leagues. If it was originally aimed at the excellent RAV4 brigade, now it is clearly targeted towards the BMW X3 customer.

Whether this will mean closing out some of the model’s traditional customers is yet to be seen. Certainly there should be no overall drop in sales, because what might be lost at one end will certainly be compensated for in gains at the other.
The fact that, like the RAV4 also, there will be no three-door version of the new model, is a tacit acknowledgment that the future is with the more serious users of SUVs. The ones who want a true workhorse instead of a ride-about-town machine.

And there’s also the fact that, like the Freelander itself, its former faithful will have grown up too. Now they have something worth their new social and demographic status.
Whatever, it is odds-on that Land Rover have yet another pedigree winner in their stable.

Austin Powers would find a lot to like about the newest member of the Land Rover family. It is a Mini Me model that looks like a Range Rover left for too long in the tumble drier.

Yet the all-new Freelander II is moving on up for 2007, from its styling to a focus on on-road performance and even a cockpit that is far more like a luxury car than a workhorse Land Rover. It is bigger in every direction — longer, wider, taller — and the pay-off is a cabin that is much more roomy as well as providing more luggage space.

The price will also take a Range Rover-style move into the prestige world with a likely starting point around $50,000.

The newcomer definitely takes the Freelander nameplate away from the dowdy original, which was slow, tight inside and outclassed by cheaper Japanese rivals. It was loved in Britain but fell well short of its opponents in the real world, despite impressive off-road ability.

There will be two powerpacks in Freelander II — six-cylinder petrol and four-cylinder turbodiesel, both with an automatic gearbox — and two levels of equipment, with the first local deliveries around the middle of 2007.

It is everything you would expect from a car company that has re-discovered its mojo, with minimal interference from its owners at the Ford Motor Company, and Land Rover Australia is predicting an early sell-out.

It also says Freelander II will take the company into new territory, well above Japanese compact four-wheel drives such as the Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V and into a head-to-head contest with the BMW X3, currently priced from $64,900.

But the three-door Freelander is gone and there are no plans for a replacement with less luxury or a tighter price.

“The volume for the three-door was pretty minimal, so it did not go forward,” says Roger Jory, the new general manager of Land Rover Australia. “We’re not going to do a bargain-basement vehicle. That’s not where the brand is going, or what Australian customers want.

“We will have two models, probably a mid-spec car with a lot of standard equipment and then an HSE on top of that.”

Jory describes the new Freelander as a “cafe and Kakadu” car and it was previewed to the world’s press in Morocco, over a broad mix of country bitumen roads, rocky tracks, sand dunes and beach running.

It handled everything easily, as well as showing off well on luxury equipment including air-conditioning, alloy wheels and satellite navigation, which was specially calibrated for the remote road conditions near the city of Essaouira.

The new Freelander is more than a compact look-alike for the Range Rover. It also drives like the Land Rover flagship, both on and off the road.

It has commendable grip, poise and comfort on the bitumen, and can go everywhere you really need to go in a four-wheel drive. Both engines are punchy and enthusiastic, yet should be relatively light on fuel.

Freelander II will be a success, without any doubt, although the final price will have some impact on the number of Freelander IIs sold in Australia and the suburbs in which they are garaged.

There were a few minor shortcomings on the Morocco test drive, but Land Rover is working on at least two.

It is investigating the unexpected and unprovoked failure of a six-cylinder engine during some sand driving — with a promise from the very top that there will be no repeat in production cars — and installing extra baffling in the rear end to reduce some tyre drumming on coarse bitumen surfaces.

Still, the seats are a little short in leg support and the giant sunroof will need more than net screens to stop serious sunburn in Australia. It was hard to peg expectations for the Freelander II, because the new Land Rovers are so good but the original Freelander was so … lacklustre.

It hardly mattered, as the new baby was great from the get-go. It accelerated briskly away from the airport and it was much easier to get comfortable, also knowing the luggage space is up by more than one-third. Even the back seat is roomier and more comfortable, with a “theatre-style” layout that puts passengers a little higher for a nicer view.

And the cramped footwell from the original Freelander is finally gone, just like the cheapy dashboard which has been replaced with a classy design with direct links to Range Rover.

There is even good space for the satnav screen, a comfy new steering wheel and clear-and-classy dials and switches.

The inline six, a departure from the usual V6 preferred for compact vehicles, was eager and the turbodiesel also showed plenty of punch. Land Rover says the six will run to 100km/h in 8.4 seconds and the turbodiesel will manage 10.9. There is no reason to doubt the claim, or the way the powerplants deliver at Aussie-speed overtaking runs.

The test drive took the Freelander II over all sorts of roads.

The bitumen was much like home, as were a lot of the dirt roads, until they really got into the rocky ranges.

The big question now is price. If Land Rover Australia can deliver the right deal, the only problem for Freelander II will be keeping up with traffic coming out of showrooms.

(this article was taken from carsguide.news.com)

According to Planet 4×4 magazine, the Land Rover Discovery 3, Range Rover and Range Rover Sport are the best performing off-roaders. The Range Rover TDV8, Discovery 3 TDV6 and Range Rover Sport Supercharged claimed all three top spots respectively while taking the top prize in six of the 14 categories. These included Best Off-Roader for the TDV8 Range Rover, Large Off-Roader for the TDV6 Discovery 3, Large SUV for the Range Rover Sport Supercharged and Manufacturer Of 2006.

Land Rover is enjoying success in the new car market as well, with sales figures for November showing that the Discovery 3′s sales are up nearly 5% on November 2005, and that sales of the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport in the first 11 months of the year were 12% and 66% ahead of the same period last year.

(This article was taken from autoindustry.co.uk)

Range Rover has raised the luxury stakes another notch with the introduction of its Range Rover TDV8, so badged because it introduces a brand-new, diesel V8 that makes this model the most powerful diesel Range Rover yet.

The engine displaces a modest, by modern standards, 3.6-litres but it generates 200kW (54 percent more than the previous TD6) and a huge 640Nm of torque – 400Nm of it at a little over idle – and that gives this big wagon a pulverising amount of off-road performance and tractability.

The new engine is a beauty that burbles more like a petrol V8 and drives through a new six-speed ZF auto gearbox with manual/sequential sport mode.

Nevertheless, it has its work cut out propelling some 2.5 tonnes of luxury at times – acceleration is brisk but the crucial 80-120km/h overtaking launch can be a bit heart-stopping on a busy road, despite right foot being firmly planted.

As speed increases, the suspension height drops automatically – a function of the car’s “terrain response” which can also be invoked manually through a rotating switch to handle rough terrain, mud, rocks and, yes, normal roads.

The basic price is R998 000 but that includes a three-year or 100 000km maintenance plan. Service intervals are 12 000km or every six months.

This is a big bruiser with loads of presence that can eat open-road kilometres with, thanks to its diesel engine, creditable economy. It also acquitted itself well on the soaring dunes of the tough launch course near Clanwilliam in the Western Cape, the huge torque pulling it out of trouble.

The terrain response rotary switch puts the driver into the correct mode and turns any driver into an instant expert. It’s a very user-friendly dial with which it is possible to take on anything thrown at it by automatically adjusting ride height and throttle response.

(this article was taken from motoring.co.nz)