Land Rover Freelander 2 (2006-) Review

Overview

• Next: Reliability and Quality

Look at the Land Rover Freelander 2 and you think at first that it's a neat facelift. Look harder, though, and you see it's a lot more than that. This bigger, better, pricier Freelander is entirely new, with not a single significant part carried over from the old one. Prices start at little more than old-model five-door money - there are no three-doors this time - but peak at well over £30,000, which places the Freelander 2 into BMW X3 territory. One reason for the upsizing is the US market, where - incredibly - the more corpulent potential buyers just wouldn't fit in the old model. The US market, unimpressed with the old car's feeble V6, is the target for the 3.2-litre, six-cylinder engine option, too; it's a straight-six, Volvo-designed but made in Wales, mounted transversely and available only with a six-speed automatic transmission. Power is 229bhp, torque 234lb-ft.

There's no small-capacity four-cylinder engine this time, because that's a market the Freelander has outgrown. The most popular engine here and in Europe, where the previous Freelander was frequently the best-selling 4x4, will be the 2.2-litre Td4 turbodiesel, a version of the new Peugeot-Citroen unit but here with just one turbocharger instead of a sequential pair. It delivers 158bhp and 295lb-ft of torque and is available with a six-speed manual and automatic gearboxes.

As before, drive is mainly to the front wheels most of the time but it can head rearwards when needed. Instead of a viscous coupling, though, the Freelander 2 uses a Haldex multi-plate clutch operated by hydraulic pressure. It's pre-loaded as soon as the engine starts, to ensure there's some rear-wheel drive straight away, thus preventing a spin and a chirp from the front wheels if you move off smartly. If needed on the move, rear-wheel drive can come back into play in just 150 milliseconds or within 15 degrees of a front wheel's slip rotation.

Base model excepted, the new Freelander comes with the off-road goodies expected of a new Land Rover. These include Hill Descent Control, first seen in the old Freelander, Terrain Response, which tailors the front/rear torque split and ESP programming to different terrain, and - new - a Gradient Release Control which releases brake pressure progressively when you take your foot off the pedal on a very steep slope. There's also a hill-start assistance system which maintains brake pressure for a few seconds between the release of the handbrake and the sensing of powered movement.

The Freelander 2 is based on Ford's EU-CD (European, upper-mid-size) architecture that also underpins the S-Max, the Galaxy, the Volvo S80 and the imminent Ford Mondeo. Obviously there are changes to suit the Land Rover's off-road role - the strut-based rear suspension is very similar to the old Freelander's, for example - but the rationalisation has cut costs. The new car is made not at Land Rover's heartland factory in Solihull but at Halewood, near Liverpool, where Jaguar X-Types are also made and Ford used to churn out Escorts in lower-tech days.