Land Rover Freelander 2 Review & Road Test: Freelander 2 SD4 HSE (2011)

Freelander 2 SD4 Review & Road Test

Whatever way you look at it, Land Rover’s current model line-up is a bit of a mess, at least as far as the lower end – Discovery 4 and Freelander 2 – are concerned.

But it’s not the sort of mess to be avoided; rather it should be embraced by buyers before Land Rover get round to fixing it.

There’s no argument about the Range Rover. It’s completely iconic and in a league of its own; a 4WD, go-anywhere alternative to a Bentley or a Rolls.

The Range Rover Sport has now become the car it always should have been, paradoxically thanks to a 3.0 litre diesel lump. I say paradoxically because you’d expect us to say the 5.0 litre supercharged lump made the Range Rover Sport a properly great car.

But the truth is that even with the 5.0 litre supercharged lump the RRS still lags behind cars like the Cayenne Turbo and – on-road at least – the X5M. No, it’s the 3.0 litre diesel that’s made the Range Rover Sport as good on road as the diesel Cayenne or X5, plus it also now has a sizeable sprinkling of real RR fairy dust to go with it.

As for the Land Rover Discovery, that is now properly good, thanks again to the same stunning 3.0 litre diesel lump that found its way in to the RRS. With the new engine – and in HSE guise – the Discovery 4 is closer to a seven-seat Range Rover than you would ever believe. This makes it a brilliant bargain – for now.

This leaves us with Land Rover’s baby – the Freelander 2.

As we discovered when we reviewed the Freelander 2 HSE last year, it really is a baby Range Rover in all but name. And for 2011 it’s got even better, particularly in the Freelander 2 HSE SD4 we have in for review, where Land Rover has done the sensible thing and tweaked the 2.2 litre diesel for a bit more oomph.

But it’s not just the oily bits that have come in for some fettling, the cosmetics have too; not in a major way, but in a ‘Still moving upmarket’ way, nevertheless.

So we see the nose getting a tweak with a refreshed bumper, new headlights, new fogs and a titivated grill. The tailgate gets a bit of fettling too, there’s new tail lights and some new alloys.

Inside the instruments get something of a refresh and there’s some higher-quality materials on offer, as evidenced by stuff like the Windsor Leather trim. The shame is Land Rover hasn’t seen fit to dump the button-fest on the centre console in favour of the Jaguar touchscreen – but you can’t have everything.

So the inexorable move of Land Rover’s offerings upmarket continues, and the cosmetic tweaks help that.

But what of the tweaks to the oily bits?

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By Cars UK