These are the Land Rover Freelander 2 ‘White & Black’ special editions, which bring the small SUV below £20,000 for the first time.

On sale in January 2010, and priced from £19,945, they are only available in black and white, with an ebony interior.

The models are powered by a 2.2-litre diesel engine with a six-speed manual gearbox. Stop-start technology helps the special editions average 42.4mpg and 179g/km of CO2 emissions.

Standard kit includes a keyless starter button, 17-inch alloy wheels, privacy glass and a load space cover.

Land Rover is also introducing two sporty versions of the Freelander 2 Sport next year. Both will get the 2.2-litre diesel engine, 19-inch alloy wheels and a rear spoiler, plus colour-matched exterior trim, door handles and mirror casings.

The standard model is available in black or grey, with a cloth interior, while models fitted with a sports pack are available only in a different shade of grey and with a leather interior.

The Freelander 2 Sport will go on sale in January 2010. Prices will start from £26,695.

This article was taken from: Autocar

BOSSES at Land Rover are hoping some of the showroom success of the Range Rover Sport will rub off on the next version of the Freelander.

Set for launch in the next few weeks, the Freelander 2 Sport will stand on 19-inch diamond turned alloy wheels, have a rear spoiler and come with a unique dual-tone interior trim finish and colour-keyed exterior trim.

An ebony-coloured centre console and lower fascia are complemented with two-tone door casings as standard.

In addition, the more upmarket version of the soft-roader model will be offered with a sports styling pack that includes full leather upholstery.

With the latest 2.2-litre TD4 diesel motor under its bonnet, the manual transmission Sport features stop-start technology delivering an eight per cent improvement on exhaust emissions compared to the previous manual Freelander and fuel consumption is cut from 37.7 to 42.2mpg.

Prices are from £26,695.

This article was taken from: eastkilbridenews.co.uk

Land Rover’s smallest Defender, the short-wheelbase 90, will return early next year.

Land Rover’s nuggety ‘‘90’’, the short-wheelbase version of the rugged Defender off-roader, will go back on sale in Australia early next year.

The Defender 90 fell out of showrooms in mid-2006 after sales slipped into a steady decline. When an updated version of the iconic off-roader was released in 2007, only the long-wheelbase 110 station wagon, crew cab and ute, and 130 crew cab and ute (the numbers refer to the length of the wheelbase in inches) were available.

But now the Degender 90, which features shorter overhangs front and rear (for steeper entry and departure angles) than the longer versions that make it a lot more versatile in the bush, will rejoin the line-up.

The 90 will get the same six-speed manual gearbox as the longer wheelbase versions, replacing the five-speeder used in the previous generation. It will also get the same 2.4-litre turbo-diesel four-cylinder generating a modest 90kW of power as the old version, although this time around it will produce 360Nm of peak torque instead of the old version’s 300Nm.

Fuel economy for the shorter version is expected to come in at about 10.0 litres per 100 kilometres, about 1.0L/100km less than the bigger models.

Land Rover Australia spokesman Guido Schenken said the smaller Defender did not go on sale when the longer versions were updated in 2007 because the 90 would have cost more than the longer-wheelbase 110.

‘‘[Bringing back the 90] was always on the plan. With the newer engine and air-conditioning it’s a lot more of a viable product,’’ Schenken said.

‘‘The previous one was pretty expensive to make, but the car is now made in the UK rather than South Africa and we can do it cheaper.’’

The Defender 90 is already on sale for $44,990 plus on-road and dealer costs, compared with $48,990 plus on-road and dealer costs for the 110 station wagon, although the first deliveries arrive next year. Just before it fell out of Australian showrooms, the Defender 90 was priced from $39,950.

The new one still won’t get stability control, but will come with anti-lock brakes that can also stop wheels with limited traction from spinning, anti-stall engine management, and a special function that will allow the driver to start the Defender in first gear in low range — meaning the driver doesn’t necessarily need to be seated in the vehicle to drive it.

Standard features are expected to include single-CD audio, air conditioning, rubber floor mats, electric front windows, power steering, and four cloth seats including two full-sized rear seats.

Land Rover has said that the Defender’s future is certain until about 2012-13, after which tough European emissions and safety laws will force the British car maker to either completely redesign the vehicle, limit sales to markets outside Europe, or scrap it altogether.

‘‘At the moment we sell about 25,000 [Defenders] worldwide, and for it to be viable to build an all-new Defender we would have to sell 50,000 units worldwide a year,’’ Schenken said.

This article was taken from: drive.com.au

I don’t understand the Land Rover Discovery. It’s like torque and electricity and Peter Mandelson. We know it exists and we know what it does. But we can’t explain it very easily. In the olden days, it made sense. There was a big hole between the utilitarian, bring-your-own-earplugs Defender and the Range Rover, which had gone all Surrey, with fancy carpets and seats smothered in cow peelings. In other words, there was no car in the Land Rover line-up for the true countryman, who wanted one car to take his cows to market and his family to the pub. The Discovery filled that hole nicely and, as a result, became very popular with murderers.

Occasionally the Disco was bought by a farmer’s wife but mostly it was bought by people who like complicated guns and camouflage trousers. These people label themselves “off-road enthusiasts” and “green-laners” but it’s all just a front for murdering.

Why does anyone need camouflage trousers? It’s because they want to hide from the police in the woods. And why do they have a Discovery? Because a Discovery can get very far into those woods, which means bodies can be buried in places where they won’t be found by pesky dog-walkers.

You may wonder why they chose a Discovery rather than, say, a Toyota Land Cruiser, but that’s because you’re not paying attention. Like murderers in hillbilly America, “off-road enthusiasts” are practical people who enjoy mending engines and gearboxes. A Land Cruiser never goes wrong and, as a result, provides no opportunity for tinkering.

And, again, like the American backwoodsman, the British rural murderer is a fiercely patriotic soul who shoots squirrels and badgers simply to prepare for the day when he is called upon to kill communists and immigrants. Furthermore, if he had a Toyota he wouldn’t be able to get as far into the woods, so his bodies would be discovered and there’d be much unpleasantness.

You think this is nonsense? Really? Well, next time you are in the British countryside, look carefully at the person driving along in an old Land Rover Discovery and ask yourself a simple question. Would you let him take your daughter for a picnic?

Anyway, after Ken Noye was sent to prison, Land Rover stopped making a car for murderers and brought out a new Discovery. And, frankly, I couldn’t work out who it was for at all.

First of all, it had an extremely odd chassis arrangement. I shan’t bore you with the details here but the upshot of this peculiar decision was simple: the car weighed 2.7 tons. That is a lot. And that meant the fuel economy was dreadful.

There were other problems too. Yes, it had seven seats, but raising and lowering those seats was extremely complicated and required the use of two hands. Which was a bit of a nuisance for the sort of person who needs a seven-seater car — school-run mums. Who usually have to get the seats up and down while carrying a toddler or shopping. This, you knew, was a car designed by men in wellies who had no concept of children. But that’s gone now and we have an even more puzzling Discovery to try to fathom.

Apart from some fancier headlamps, it looks pretty much the same as the last version, but inside, it’s even more upmarket, with lots of soft-touch this and electronic that.

Underneath, they’ve fiddled with the suspension setup to make the steering more precise, they’ve lost some weight and now you can specify the 3-litre twin-turbo diesel engine that first saw the light of day in the Jaguar XF.

Retuned for the Disco so that it produces 241bhp, it’s epic. Yes, it sounds a bit coarse and diesely when you fire it up, but thereafter it’s sewing-machine smooth, nicely zingy and almost unbelievably economical. Drive carefully and you’ll get 30mpg.

I liked driving the new Disco very much. It was smooth, quiet and extremely comfortable; the steering was good, the driving position was excellent and, while you still needed two hands to move the seats about, the seven-seat practicality was a bonus as well.

Then there’s the price to think about. The range starts — with the old 2.7-litre version — at £32,000, while the car I tested is £47,695. I’m not going to pretend that this is cheap but it is £17,000 less than a diesel-powered Range Rover TDV8 Vogue.

And what exactly does the Range Rover have that the new Discovery does not? They have the same off-road gubbins, and the Disco has — for an extra 600 quid — the same brilliant command system, which means five exterior cameras feed images of what they see to the screen on the dash. You can choose which feed you want to look at, and even zoom in on things you find interesting.

The idea is that you can spot obstacles as you drive off-road, but it’s huge fun to switch between the images as you drive on road, making your own movie. It gets better. It’s possible, through mind-boggling technology, for the passenger to watch a DVD while the driver — looking at the same screen — sees the sat nav map. How brilliant is that?

Yes, the Range Rover has a V8 engine, but the Disco, with its new V6, is only 0.4sec slower to 60. And that doesn’t seem like £17,000-worth of lost oomph to me.

It used to be that the Range Rover felt more of a luxurious car. Not any more. With its hand-stitched leather and “mood” lighting, the Disco is just as palatial, and you have exactly the same imperious driving position. The conclusion, then, is simple. If you want a go-anywhere luxury car, buy the Discovery 4.

Except you can’t, because when you drive along in your new car, no one will think: “Ah, there’s a canny chap. He’s saved £17,000.” They will think: “Oh dear. Poor man. He can’t afford a Range Rover.” This is known, in my head, as the Porsche Boxster syndrome — you buy one if you can’t afford a 911.

In the same way, it’s impossible to drive a Discovery without thinking of the Range Rover. I’m not talking about the (ghastly) Range Rover Sport but what I call the “proper” Range Rover — aka the best car in the world. There is something about a Range Rover that makes you feel better even though the Discovery feels similar to drive. I can’t explain this any more than Faraday could explain electricity. It’s just a fact.

All you ever think in a Disco is: “God. I wish I had a Range Rover.” It’s like being on holiday in Port Grimaud. You’re in the same country as St Tropez. You’re on the same bay. You have the same weather and the same food. And you’ve paid less. But you’re not actually in St Tropez and that makes you feel constantly disappointed with your lot.

Of course, you can argue that you bought the Discovery because you need seven seats. But if you need seven seats, the Volvo XC90 is a more sensible, more practical, easier to use and less expensive solution.

So there we are. The Land Rover Discovery 4. It’s excellent. Don’t buy one.

This article was taken from: Times Online

If there was a prize for “most improved truck following a refresh,” the 2010 Land Rover LR4—the vehicle formerly known as the LR3—would take the prize. The outgoing vehicle was great off road and had one of the best third-row packages on the market, but it was woefully under-powered for its 5700-pound heft.

Aligning Power with Weight

The LR4, which went on sale earlier this year, got a heavier facelift than Mickey Rourke—although we’d say the LR4’s was somewhat more successful. First up, Land Rover addressed the power-to-weight issue by replacing the old 295-hp 4.4-liter V-8 with Jaguar/Land Rover’s latest direct-injection, 5.0-liter V-8. Result: 80 additional horses for a total of 375 hp. With 375 lb-ft of torque, the engine motivates the LR4 from 0 to 60 mph in 6.5 seconds, a 1.7-second improvement over the best time we saw for an LR3. The 30-to-50–mph and 50-to-70–mph passing times come down from 4.2 and 6.3 seconds to 3.5 and 4.9, respectively. Mated to a revised ZF six-speed automatic transmission, the LR4 now feels quite lively on the highway, despite its nearly three-ton mass.

The previous LR3 always leaned too much in corners for our liking and also suffered some head toss on the freeway. For the LR4, Land Rover revised the steering rack and suspension bushings and fitted new suspension knuckles, shocks, and a stiffer and larger anti-roll bar. The upshot is less roll and sharper steering, while the ride is better controlled on the highway. Skidpad grip has improved from a mediocre 0.71 g to 0.78 g, which is competitive with the likes of the Volkswagen Touareg and BMW X3, if not on par with the Acura MDX’s 0.86 g. We didn’t have too many concerns about the LR3’s brakes, which were already plenty powerful, but a revised system has improved pedal feel. The 70-to-0–mph stopping distance remains essentially unaffected, dropping from 173 feet to 171. Land Rover also refined the off-road settings and hill-descent control, adding a “sand launch control” function for better performance in the desert. We suspect the nearest most LR4s will come to using this will be on their owners’ private beaches.

Classier Duds

The other major element of the makeover was a restyle, inside and out. New head- and taillamps that incorporate LEDs, a redesigned front bumper, and a smoother front end freshen what was already a good-looking truck, while new features include an available auto high-beam function and a surround camera system with five cameras that aid parking, towing, and off-road maneuvers.

The new interior is spectacular, with natural wood, stitched leather surfaces, and brushed aluminum trim. Ambient lighting, a new steering wheel, first- and second-row seats, and the center console are among the other changes for 2010. The navigation system’s interface has a menu-style structure that’s not as easy to use as it could be, but there’s also a driver information screen sited within the redesigned instrument cluster. The neat folding third-row seats—which are actually habitable by real grown ups—are carried over.

A Solid Package Made Better

Our tester’s base price of $48,100—$1350 more than the LR3—included full leather seating, a power sunroof, power front seats, dual-zone climate control, steering-wheel-mounted audio controls, and 19-inch aluminum wheels. The seven-seat HSE Plus package added $5910 to the price and included navigation, front park assist, Bluetooth connectivity, the third-row seats, HD radio, auto high beams, and a cold-climate package.

At $54,760, the LR4 is priced competitively in the mid-sized luxury SUV segment. It might not be as good an all-around package as the Acura MDX or as entertaining to drive as the BMW X5, but the revisions have turned it into a much more capable vehicle on the blacktop. We think that most potential buyers will be pleased with the upgrades, but are more likely to choose the LR4 on the basis of the refreshed exterior styling and the gorgeous new interior, which gives it the upscale ambience of the Range Rover. For about 30 grand less.

This article was taken from: caranddriver.com