There has been a crop of new contenders in the premium small SUV market this year. First off came the Volvo XC60, followed by the Audi Q5. Now we have a significant upgrade to the Land Rover Freelander.
In one area in particular, the Freelander wears the crown as king of the small 4x4s. It is the only one that can really do what 4x4s are supposed to do, although if you spend less money on a Suzuki Grand Vitara you’ll find that very capable, too. But here we are talking premium, which the Suzuki is not.
It would be easy for Land Rover to roll over in the face of such strongly incapable opposition and dumb down the Freelander by concentrating on its on-road delivery. But doing so would risk devaluing the Land Rover brand, which is established around rugged ability of a type most people who buy 4x4s desire but never need.
People who are not too serious about whether or not their 4x4 will really get them out of trouble are not short of cars to choose from that look the part. They talk the talk OK, but they are not up to walking the walk as well.
Land Rover, for instance, is the only maker to supply a 4x4 of this size for press test and fits it with Mud and Snow tyres. It wants you to off-road with its cars, show them some serious stuff and prove to yourself that you won’t get into trouble.
There isn’t a Land Rover made that can’t tackle serious stuff – I’ve even forded a swift flowing Scottish river in the previous generation Freelander before going on to traverse moorland with no tracks to follow and it never got stuck.
Land Rover still has its off-road experts to advise on technique for off roading but now the message is all about being green – off-setting the CO2 output for 45,000 miles and stuff like that is included in the list price. The money goes into a mixed portfolio of projects, including renewable energy, technology change and energy efficiency initiatives. It doesn’t just grow trees.
But now it has gone one better because all manual transmission Freelanders are equipped with stop/start technology - some wags will tell you with that with the electronics on their Freelanders they’ve had such a system for years. But this is for real, with the aim of driving fuel efficiency and reducing CO2 output quite significantly.
All Freelanders have materials that allow 85 per cent of the vehicle to be reusable or recyclable, but then every serious Land Rover owner I know has a vehicle carrying bits borrowed or cannibalised from other Land Rovers. Of the left overs, another 10 per cent is recyclable or recoverable, which doesn’t leave much to get chucked in landfill.
As well as making capable cars, Land Rover also ensures that all its products, including some of the basic Defender models, have luxury kit installed. So the £32,595 Freelander I drove most recently had the 2.2 litre Peugeot-sourced Td4 diesel engine coupled to a six speed manual gearbox and with the new stop-start package.
It was giving around 36 mpg which I thought maybe a little disappointing compared with the 34 mpg I got from an automatic Freelander I drove late last year. But the most significant development of stop-start and other bits of trickery now on the car is that it brings CO2 emissions down to 179 g/km from 224. It will also, claims Land Rover, deliver 49.6 mpg on the extra urban cycle but don’t buy one in the expectation of seeing that because it won’t happen.
The TD4_e also has one of those nagging indicator lights to tell you when to change gear but more importantly the new system ensures that everything else keeps working uninterrupted when the engine closes down as you sit in traffic queues. Sadly, the technology is not offered on automatic Freelanders, the ones most likely to be favoured by people who sit in queues.
Maurice Hardy
Land Rovers have been a big feature in our motoring lives – if you count our two Range Rovers as well, members of the Hardy household have spent around 17 years as Land Rover owners and thoroughly enjoyed most of them, despite the reliability problems that sometimes arose.
What you always know is that they are tough enough to stand hard use and have the physical capability to get you most places. These days they also have the luxury to do it in comfort – you don’t have to rough it just because you want to spend some time in the wild.
This latest Freelander is a good example. It cossets its occupants with its luxurious grandstand seating that is liberally covered with the skins of dead cows. There’s electric adjustment for the front chairs while the rear ones fold easily to increase the load space.
The boot area is not as generous as you might expect when you look at the size of the car, thanks to the high floor, but it totals 1,670 litres with the seats folded, which betters many rivals – but not all. It will pull two tonnes as well, which is why you see so many of them attached to the front of large caravans. If you want a small SUV that will do what it says on the tin, this is it.
Annette Hardy
Car: Land Rover Freelander 2 TD4_e HSE
Does it fit your ego?...
0-62 mph: 11.7 secs
Top speed: 112 mph
Bhp: 160 @ 4000 rpm
Torque: 295 lb ft @ 2000 rpm
...and your wallet?...
Price: £32,595
Urban: 33.2 mpg
Extra urban: 49.6 mpg
Combined: 42.2 mpg
CO2 emissions: 179 g/km
Insurance Group: 13
Best bits: more capable; more comfortable; less polluting.
