Not only is is possible to spend forty thousand pounds on a Land Rover Freelander, lots of people are doing exactly that. Glenn Brooks tries a top-spec HSE Lux to see what you get for your money.
You almost wonder how Land Rover gets away with charging the sort of money that it now does for the poshest version of the Freelander 2. That’s until you consider various factors, such as what London property prices are doing (a hint: this week’s issue of The Economist uses the term ‘rocketing’) or the country having just had its 15th consecutive monthly rise in sales of new cars. In that context, for some, a Freelander that costs more than a Boxster is no big deal.
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For the record, the HSE Lux model grade is priced at GBP38,805 including VAT, if you specify the most powerful 190PS 2.2-litre diesel engine and automatic transmission. If you want a full size spare, you’ll need to add another GBP185, but that was the only option the press review car came with.
It’s easy to overlook the role the Freelander has been playing in the ongoing upmarket push of the Land Rover brand. After all, the Evoque seems to be a model everyone is driving, new shape Range Rovers are no longer a rare sight, and the L494 series RR Sport is only days away from reaching UK dealerships.
Can it really be seven years since the current Freelander was launched? It premiered at the London motor show in July 2006 and continued more or less unchanged until the arrival of a facelifted model in 2010, with a second update being revealed at last summer’s Moscow show.
To Americans, Canadians and Mexicans, this is the Land Rover LR2 and until the launch of the 2013 model year vehicle in late 2012, the sole engine for North America had been a now discontinued 3.2-litre inline six-cylinder unit. This, the Si6, is still built by Ford’s Bridgend plant but now the only customer is Volvo Cars, which fits variants from the same family to some of its larger models.
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By GlobalDataWe in Britain cannot buy a Freelander 2 with the Ford-sourced Si4 GTDi (it’s the 2.0 EcoBoost with a new name) four-cylinder petrol engine which replaced the Si6 in North America and elsewhere but we do get the choice of 150PS (‘SD4’) and 190PS (‘TD4’) versions of Ford and PSA’s 2.2-litre four-cylinder diesel.
If the lowest possible CO2 number is a priority, you can also choose a front-wheel drive variant, the eD4, which has a six-speed manual gearbox and stop-start, with a CO2 average of 158g/km.
All cars have a handy fuel saving device known as Intelligent Power System Management or IPSM. This includes Smart Regenerative Recharging (no official initials), a feature which makes sure that when possible, the alternator is only charging the battery when the vehicle is decelerating. Ergo, kinetic energy is recovered and no fuel is wasted.
To many buyers, this wouldn’t be a real Land Rover if it didn’t have four-wheel drive, so all variants apart from the base two-wheel drive eD4 come with an intelligent four by four system. This includes Terrain Response, a technology which optimises the electronic systems for whatever conditions the vehicle is faced with. There are four settings: General Driving, Grass-Gravel-Snow, Mud & Ruts, and Sand.
A lot has changed for Land Rover since this vehicle was first launched, especially in terms of manufacturing. JLR seems to be planning for the addition of yet more additional models in both brands’ futures, if the recent and ongoing expansion of the main Land Rover plant at Solihull is any indication. The Freelander, however, continues to be built at Halewood on Merseyside, alongside the Evoque.
Production got underway in December 2006, making this the first Land Rover not to be manufactured at the firm’s traditional Solihull base in the West Midlands. That was a fairly radical move at the time but two years ago, another milestone was passed as CKD assembly commenced at a Tata Motors plant in India. The same facility in Pune then added assembly of the Jaguar XF in January this year.
Will we see other global plants building this vehicle? It seems likely. In October 2012, reports out of China indicated that the Freelander 2 would be the first Jaguar Land Rover model to be made at the forthcoming Chery Auto-JLR joint venture factory in Changshu.
The first Chinese made Freelander is expected to roll off the line in July 2014, with capacity of 43,000 per annum said to be planned (plus 34,000 units of the Range Rover Evoque, 30,000 units of a Jaguar sedan and a further 23,000 units of an unspecified Chery model). There is as yet no official confirmation of these models, dates and numbers, it should be noted, but the JV’s longer term plan is reportedly to increase annual vehicle sales and production from the initial 130,000, to 250,000 units.
Back to the vehicle itself. The latest model, on sale in the UK for just over six months now, is selling better than ever. The styling update included a new grille, headlamps, foglamps and rear lamps, while the interior gained a 7-inch monitor and smarter surface finish for the dashboard. An electronic parking brake has also liberated more room between the front seats and it has a clever feature which adjusts brake force depending on how steep the slope is you’re parked on.
Does the Freelander 2 feel forty thousand pounds’ worth inside? Of course, you don’t need to pay anywhere near that for a base variant, but the test vehicle certainly had a high end feel to it, as all almost all Land Rovers these days tend to have (let’s exclude the 65th Anniversary Defender I drove in May but I will admit that one charmed me in other ways).
I recently spent a day and a half driving the new Range Rover Sport – more about that soon but here’s a preview – and found myself fairly loved up with its optional 23-speaker Meridian audio system. Where can you put so many speakers, you ask? Well, there were even some in the ceiling above the driver and passenger. The Freelander 2 can also be ordered with an optional top-end system from the same specialist firm. Choose from outputs of 380W (11 speakers) or 825W (17 speakers) but if you’re happy with the standard system, you still get 80W and eight speakers.
Ipanema Sand paintwork, Windsor leather almond seats, almond and nutmeg trim colours, 19″ alloy diamond turned wheels – it all sounds pretty swish doesn’t it? I’m quoting here from the spec sheet where I checked to see if the top-spec 825W Meridian system is standard for the HSE Lux model grade (it is). Is it worth forty grand though? Maybe that’s not the right question. Are people happy to pay that? Yes they are. Is Land Rover selling lots of them? Yes it is.
Finally, if you think the UK is in an economic downturn, no-one seems to have told new car buyers, especially those who want a premium brand model. This time last year, the SMMT’s sales data showed Land Rover in seventeenth position by brand for the first five months of the year. From 1 January to 31 May 2013, it has climbed to 13th place and last month it overtook Skoda. If the people running, say, Alfa Romeo or Lancia or Lincoln or SEAT or Volvo want to learn how to turn a troubled brand into a sales and profits powerhouse, they should look at what Land Rover has been up to in its home market these last few years.
Given some new and additional products – the obvious opportunity being for a third Range Rover sized and priced between the Evoque and the Sport – and this could one day be a top-ten brand in the UK. Perhaps in a few years’ time, I’ll be asking of the future Freelander 3, “Is fifty grand too much to pay?”
