A friend once told me that whenever he hears “Land Rover” he always sees, in his mind’s eye, a skinny, middle-aged man with blackened fingernails, wearing khaki shorts that stop just above grubby knees.
Ever since then I can’t help but see the same old geezer every time I hear or see the magic words. Owners of the original Land Rovers do seem to be a singularly eccentric bunch, but the British — well, sort of — company has brought out some pretty serious hardware in the past few years.
In 2002, it introduced the new Range Rover, followed by the Discovery 3 in 2004 and the Range Rover Sport in 2005. That year also saw Land Rover experience its best sales to date worldwide, despite all the lingering horror stories about dodgy quality control. But that’s enough of that — let’s get down to the Freelander 2. In a nutshell, I love it.
The baby Land Rover is a far cry indeed from the underpowered girly car that masqueraded as a 4X4 back in 1997. The two-litre version I tested then produced very little steam at low revs, and not much more as the needle approached the red line. That, allied with the fact that the Freelander is actually a soft-roader, with no low-range transfer box, meant that any attempt to cross even moderately rough or loose terrain required that you go like hell to keep up momentum, or you were sure as shooting going to get stuck.
But that didn’t worry most people buying into the image — the Freelander was Europe’s top-selling 4X4 for five years, and only relinquished its crown as best-selling SUV in the United Kingdom at the end of 2005. There were a few unhappy owners — very unhappy, judging by the internet forums — but loads more who were very pleased with their cars. Me, I’d have given the first-generation Freelander a miss.
The new Freelander is everything that the original should have been, and is, I believe, one of the most appealing vehicles in its class. The wimpy styling has gone, replaced by sharp lines that give the wagon a look much like that of its popular big brother, the Discovery III.
The car is bigger than its predecessor, and this time around offers a choice of two lovely engines that produce enough power and torque to render the lack of a low-range transmission incidental when the vehicle is driven as it was designed to be driven.
The petrol engine, a six-cylinder inline Volvo design built at Ford’s engine plant in Bridgend, south Wales, is unique because the engineers cunningly stuck all the drives for the ancillary equipment on the gearbox end of the engine, rather than the front, which enabled them to keep the block very short, at just 600,5mm. The Freelander, with the help of the Swedes and the Yanks, is thus the first vehicle in its class to utilise a transversely mounted six-cylinder engine.
But why is this important? A 3,2-litre straight six is very desirable because it’s smooth and powerful, and the fact that it’s mounted across rather than along the axis of the vehicle means that the engine bay can be kept short, with a resulting reduction in front overhang — good for off-road use — and the cabin can be longer, which is good for passenger and boot space.
The Freelander gained in both areas, with luggage space being a whopping 38% bigger than that of the old model. The new engine, which produces 171 kW of power and 317 Nm of torque, is an absolute gem, investing the Freelander with a 0-100km/h time of just 8,9 seconds, and a top speed of 200km/h.
The four-cylinder 2,2 turbo-diesel engine offered in the newest Land Rover is also a beaut. Jointly developed by Ford and PSA Peugeot Citroën (confusing, isn’t it), this delivers 118 kW and a whopping 400 Nm of torque, which is good enough for a top speed of close to 200km/h and a 0-100km/h time of 11,7 seconds. More importantly, all that torque is available from just 2 000rpm, which means the lack of a low-range transmission doesn’t render the vehicle useless off-road.
During the launch near Upington, we did a fair amount of moderate off-road driving, and, for an unashamed soft-roader, the Freelander is pretty capable. It possesses the necessary attributes of good ground clearance and shortish front and rear overhangs, and what the vehicle lacks in hard-core 4X4 technology is largely compensated for by electronic driver aids.
The Freelander is now equipped with a less complex version of Land Rover’s unique Terrain Response system, which allows the driver to simply dial in the type of terrain he anticipates crossing. The vehicle then alters engine power and torque output for those conditions, and the auto gearbox adjusts the shift points to an appropriate rev range.
The Freelander also boasts all the usual electronic driving aids, as well as Hill Descent Control, which keeps speeds down when tackling steep downhills, and Gradient Release Control, which makes for easy take-offs on steep uphills. There’s also Corner Brake Control and Roll Stability Control, which monitors corner speed, steering-wheel position and body roll, and, if it senses the driver’s pushing the boundaries a little too much, intervenes to defuse the situation.
The Land Rover Freelander 2 is an attractive and very well equipped soft-roader that is simply light years ahead of the model it replaces. It feels very well screwed together, it’s more competent than most of the rest in its class off-road, and it’s great on the tar. Buyers have a choice of three trim levels and two engines, with pricing ranging from R339Â 000 to R429Â 000, which is reasonable for what the vehicle offers.
There are still some question marks regarding Land Rover’s quality control, but I suspect that things are now much better than they were a couple of years ago. JD Power, which has had more than a few issues with Land Rover quality in the past, awarded the Halewood plant near Warwick in the UK a European Plant Quality Gold Award in 2005, so the factory must be doing something right.