Land Rover Reviews

I never liked the Land Rover Freelander. It was too cramped, too costly against Japanese rivals, and not classy enough against new-age European SUVs.Then there was the time a Freelander 2 engine detonated on a beach in Morocco and I had to abandon ship as the car caught fire.Its replacement, the Land Rover Discovery Sport, is altogether different and altogether better.The car looks good, it's quiet and refinedIt will take a proper local drive to know exactly how much better, because the global press preview was held in the extreme landscape of Iceland in winter, which could not be more different from an Australian summer.But the car looks good, it's quiet and refined, there is much more space in the cabin — including fold-down occasional seats for a seven-place layout — and it's right on the money at $53,300 for the manual TD4 SE. It will be more like $60,000 once you get an auto and anything but white paint, and the top model is $69,000, but the sales team won't have to work very hard to top the 1200-a-year performance of the Freelander, even though it started at only $44,900."We don't particularly want to compare this model to Freelander. But if you look at the standard features, it's a very different vehicle," says Matt Weisner, sales and operations director of Jaguar Land Rover Australia."We feel this vehicle is incredibly competitive against the BMW X3 and Audi Q5. For that price, you get navigation, electric seats, 18-inch alloys, and rear-view camera, and grain-fed leather seats. It's a pretty compelling package."It can carry more passengers and luggage than anything in its classMore importantly, it's a total rethink and rework of the starter car in the Land Rover family. That's why the Freelander name is dead and gone.The Disco Sport — which gets some rub-off from the popularity of the full-sized Discovery — gets back to the idea of a compact SUV for families, not a four-wheel handbag like the Evoque, with smart detailing that even runs to air vents for the third-row jump seats."We think it's the most practical and versatile compact SUV. It can carry more passengers and luggage than anything in its class," says Murray Dietsch, the head of the Discovery Sport program who has been with Land Rover for nine years after a transfer from Ford Australia."We see it as a cracking opportunity. It's a car, from a quality point of view, that allows us to be positioned against the BMW X3, Audi Q5 and Volvo XC60. It can draw from below as well, from the Japanese brands."But if you're thinking it's a workhorse, think again. It's not as fashion forward as the Evoque, which provides the basic mechanical package from the bumper through to the rear seats, but it's elegant and refined.You can see it in the dashboard layout with a new multimedia system, and feel it in a nine-speed automatic and vastly improved suspension and four-wheel drive. There's also the larger boot with a lower loading lip, sliding second-row seats and much more.Nothing remotely challenges the Discovery SportThe Iceland preview drive, with Dietsch running point, ran to about 300 kilometres in the 2.2-litre turbo petrol model with 177kW/340Nm and the high-output turbodiesel with 140kW/420Nm which is expected to be most popular powerplant in Australia. The conditions changed from dry coarse bitumen to rugged snowy tracks and even a fast-flowing icy river.Nothing remotely challenges the Discovery Sport, which is clearly worthy of a Land Rover plate. It is easy to handle, utterly competent, and often better than the drivers in the tough stuff.The nine-speeder makes sublime shifts, the engines are punchy from the get-go, and the suspension is compliant in all conditions. I'm not sure about Australia, but it wins in Iceland.It's just as easy to appreciate the quality in the cabin, a safety package that includes seven airbags and auto emergency braking — Land Rover says it's just won five stars in Euro NCAP testing — and the extra space in the cabin. There is 86 millimetres of extra legroom in the back and, although not advisable for long trips, I slid into the ($1990) third-row jump seats to confirm they are even fine for 178-centimetre adults.For me, it's also important that the legroom in the front is a lot better than the Freelander, that it's much quieter, and that the look and feel is more as you would find in an Audi.The Discovery Sport goes on sale in May and is crucial to the future of Land Rover in Australia. It's the first step up the ladder to the Range Rover and I can — finally — see and feel the family connection.It's also more family focused than its German opponents, and more off-roadable as well, which are both good things. And towing capacity is up to 2200 kilograms

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